16/01/2023
National law firm Bevan Brittan announces its latest round of investment at the start of 2023 with two new senior hires in its higher education practice.
Elizabeth Dunford is a technology and data protection lawyer. She joins from Coventry University where she worked in the Legal Services team advising on all technology and data protection work streams, as well as heading up the Information Governance Unit and was also advising on their technology work streams. Prior to that she was at Pinsent Masons. Elizabeth authored the Universities UK’s guidance on sharing information for harassment cases and recently spoke about this at AMOSSHE (The Student Services Organisation) “sexual harassment misconduct: supporting students” conference.
Sarah Court-Brown is a public lawyer with previous experience of working with awarding bodies, research organisations and (historically) HEFCE. She frequently advises on equality issues in education, for example – recently – how to deal with reasonable adjustments requests for exams against the backdrop of previous Covid-19 adjustments. Sarah’s public law expertise also lends itself to helping clients with public procurement issues and data protection compliance including freedom of information law.
These latest recruits will enable Bevan Brittan to provide legal services to the wider higher education sector across the UK, where the firm already offers pragmatic legal advice to a growing number of universities and higher education institutions (HEIs).
Virginia Cooper, partner and joint head of the firm’s Higher Education Group, said: “We’ve made considerable investment in the higher education group in recent years, and now is the time to continue this by extending our overall offering to the higher education sector to meet growing demand.
“We welcome Elizabeth and Sarah to the higher education group and look forward to utilising their different skillsets which will protect and enhance our client’s governance and data protection keeping them compliant at all times, as well as offering tailored expertise to higher education clients when navigating their technology projects.”
The higher education group has received recognition in 2022 for their outstanding contribution to the industry by being nominated as a finalist at the Education Investor Awards and is also ranked by Legal 500 for education.
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