Published: 22nd April 2024
Updated: 21st May 2024
Area: Shakespeare Martineau

We are delighted to announce nine promotions across a variety of teams and locations.

Effective 1 May 2024, we have promoted one person to partner, three people to legal director, as well as five people to associate.

Based in Birmingham, Simon Hayden – who has more than 20 years’ experience in acting for a range of property developers, landowners and occupiers but with a particular interest in development work – has been promoted to partner.

New legal directors include Laura Taylor, Monica Ghai and Stewart Argo, all based in Birmingham.

  • Specialist construction solicitor Laura advises on both contentious and non-contentious matters and works with a vast range of public and private sector clients.
  • Monica practises in all areas of family law breakdown, including divorce and financial remedy proceedings, as well as disputes involving children and domestic abuse.
  • Commercial and technology solicitor Stewart advises public and private sector clients on a wide variety of issues, including commercial contracts, IT, data protection and transactional intellectual property.

Promoted to associate level is Reveka Athanasiadou and Lisa Cox in Leicester; Danielle Humphries and Mohamed Patel in Birmingham; and Deeya Ray in London.

  • Having practised initially in Greece for nine years, Reveka is an experienced dual-qualified solicitor, who specialises in non-contentious commercial law and contracts.
  • Danielle is an employment lawyer who specialises in the further and higher education sector. She also offers assistance with defending employment tribunal claims and business immigration matters.
  • Lisa has more than 30 years’ experience in residential conveyancing dealing with freehold and leasehold sales, purchases, transfers of equity and remortgages. She is also an expert in unregistered titles and dealing with post-death transactions.
  • Mohamed works with a range of clients – including short-term lenders, banks and Islamic finance institutions – dealing with a wide range of facilities for each client from company finance to complex commercial property finance transactions.
  • Deeya Ray is a dual-qualified solicitor with more than five years’ experience working on corporate transactions in England and Wales and India.

Alex Smith, managing director, said: “It is our people who make our business, and it is our clients who benefit from our investments in them, so rewarding high performance is part of our culture. We are committed to the continued investment and development of our people, empowering them to provide excellent service to clients regionally and nationally. It is great to see such a significant number of promotions across the different teams and at various levels – congratulations to all!

We are proactively recruiting lateral hires and teams. See our careers page for more information

Alex Smith

Partner & Managing Director

Get in touch

As Managing Director of Shakespeare Martineau’s Infrastructure & Specialist Markets Business Unit, I’m responsible for the strategic growth of the business unit, working closely with colleagues in the development of our strategy, values and culture.

We’re leading the way in the evolution of sustainable communities; providing legal advice and professional services across – but not limited to – construction, planning, later living, social housing, built to rent, industrial and logistics, energy, education, real estate, commercial and residential property.

As part of Ampa we are ensuring that we have an environment and culture that encourages cross team and empowered working, to consistently deliver great client service and unlock potential.

How we can help

Careers

It’s the people at Shakespeare Martineau that make us so special. By understanding what our people want, giving them the support they need, recognising everyone’s contribution and realising the unique power of teams; together we win.

Our latest Company News updates

Our legal experts are here to answer any question you might have

If you’d like to speak to a member of our team, please fill out the form and we’ll be in touch within two hours.
If you know who you need to contact, you will find a full list of our people with email and telephone numbers here.
Call Us: 0330 024 0333