Lee Vallender
Barrister, called to the Bar at Lincoln's Inn in 2005. Twenty years advising public bodies on regulation, governance and the delivery of complex change.
Lee Vallender
Formerly General Counsel at Manchester City Council, and nine years at Deloitte UK at Assistant Director level.
My work sits where regulatory law meets operational delivery. I am most often instructed where a legal question cannot be answered in isolation: where a licensing framework has to work for the officers applying it, where a governance structure has to survive audit as well as challenge, or where a reform programme has to proceed despite political constraint.
That combination is less common than it sounds. Most regulatory advice is written by lawyers who have never run a service. Most transformation advice is written by consultants who have never had to defend a decision at committee or in court. I have done both, and the advice reflects it.
Background
- Manchester City Council. General Counsel. Markets and street trading, including the Christmas Markets, with budget responsibility of £11.5m.
- Deloitte UK. Nine years at Assistant Director level, advising local authorities on regulatory transformation and service redesign.
- General Medical Council. Work on the establishment of the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service.
- London Borough of Camden. Street trading and Business Improvement District formation.
- KPMG and SQW. Public sector advisory.
Qualifications
- Called to the Bar, Lincoln's Inn, 2005
- LLB, University of Liverpool
- MPA, University of Warwick
- PRINCE2 and Managing Successful Programmes (MSP)
- Executive education at the University of Oxford, the London School of Economics and Imperial College London
Working with a single-counsel practice
Devol Legal is deliberately a one-barrister firm. Clients reasonably ask what that means for capacity and continuity, so it is worth answering directly.
The person who scopes your work is the person who does it. There is no pyramid here. Nothing is sold by a partner and delivered by someone three years qualified, which is the complaint I heard most often from public bodies during nine years inside a large advisory firm.
I take on engagements where I can resource them properly, and I say so when I cannot. Where a matter needs specialist input beyond my own practice, that is arranged expressly, with your agreement, and you are told who is doing what before any work starts.