Laura Steel

Experience

Education/universities

• was a key member of the delivery team on a large-scale retainer to a global HE provider, managing the day-to-day SLA and reporting requirements and working directly with business leads and the GC on major projects as well as routine operational contracts.
• Undertook a 9-month virtual secondment with a red brick university to assist them with their day-to-day legal matters. This involved drafting a wide variety of contracts and giving urgent legal advice intertwined with commercial steer to a range of different departments and stakeholders at the university.
• Advised on and drafted a contract for partnership between an HE provider and The Times Academy (of the Times Newspapers Group) acting for an HE group company providing design, development, build, hosting, support and maintenance in relation to a white-labelled online e-learning platform, to deliver a wide range of learning and development courses to its subscribers;
• Drafted agreements for the provision of various (international) recruitment services to an HE client;
• drafted intellectual property provisions and advised in relation to the same in the context of consultancy agreements between the relevant University and individual tutors;
• advised on, negotiated and amended collaboration Agreements between Universities and automotive companies.
• Advised on and drafted NDAs, heads of terms and partnering arrangements.
  
  

Outsourcing and Technology

• Advised a leading packaging company on a multi-million pound IT system reconfiguration and reviewed, amended and negotiated the MSA with the IT supplier.
• undertook a virtual 3-month secondment with a cloud-powered video surveillance firm. Laura advised this company in its contract negotiations with a large telecoms provider and on a range of data protection and contractual matters, as well as advising on permissive and restrictive open source software licences.
• Carried out a review of circa 80 IT outsourcing contracts of a leading community pharmacy and healthcare provider against their commercial contracting principles, as part of a wider project in which the client was going through an internal re-organisation and the contracting group entity for such IT outsourcing contracts was changing.
  
  

Logistics & Distribution

• Reviewed, advised on, and negotiated new agreements for the provision of warehousing and logistics services to a variety of commercial clients.
• Negotiated with national publisher’s incumbent UK provider in respect of a warehousing and distribution agreement, including in relation to price increases and service levels.
  
  

Intellectual property

• Drafted assignments, licences and provided training in respect of intellectual property rights.
• Advised on compliance with the CDPA 1988 in the context of screening films to students, staff and members of the public;
• Advised an educational publisher on the implications of using video clips and the application of any relevant copyright exemptions;
• Acting on a £60 million share acquisition of an IT service provider which involved reviewing and reporting on over 70 IP licences, conducting due diligence, completing IP searches, reporting on the issues and raising further enquiries.
  
  

Data Protection

• Advised a national children’s book publishers on their obligations in relation to breach reporting and data protection compliance.
• Advised a leading IT managed service provider on cross-border transfers and data processing clauses.
• Delivered training to a global organisation on UK data protection compliance issues.

Career

Laura qualified as a solicitor in the intellectual property and information law teams at Pinsent Masons in March 2016. She joined the outsourcing, technology and commercial team at Wright Hassall in September 2017.

Interests

Laura spent some of her childhood in Saudi Arabia and is a keen traveller. In her spare time, Laura also enjoys reading, cooking, spending time with friends and walks in the countryside.