Clifford Chance
From advising on wind farms at Clifford Chance to general counsel at a trailblazing renewable energy company.
“I had no idea where I wanted to specialise,” says Victoria of joining the firm as a trainee in 2003. But her third training seat was with the Energy & Infrastructure group and “suddenly it was like I had found my home”, she explains. Victoria liked the industry focus, physical nature of the assets and the broader range of work involved. The clincher was the warmth of the team and the opportunity to spend six months in Clifford Chance’s São Paolo office working on energy projects, which was, she adds:
“An incredible place to live and learn.”
Qualifying into the Energy & Infrastructure group in 2005, she soon encountered another career-defining moment when working on an early onshore wind farm deal. “It was all brand new and felt so cutting edge. I remember sitting in a meeting with someone talking about building turbines in the sea”, says Victoria, who quickly realised that “this is what I would like to do with the rest of my life”.
Yet it was her passion for green energy that led her to begin looking beyond Clifford Chance. She explains: “I was starting to get the feeling that when you're in private practice, you see quite a limited window… you never really know what happens afterwards”. That hunger to be more involved was intensified during a client secondment:
“Suddenly, I was seeing a project through the whole cycle: planning, building and operating.”
In 2012, she left her role as a Senior Associate at Clifford Chance to join power giant Centrica as their renewables lawyer, subsequently becoming Head of Legal for their power generation business and then an Associate General Counsel. In 2019, having worked in large companies for 16 years, she wanted to experience working somewhere smaller and more agile, and took an interim general counsel role at Entrepreneur First, a talent incubator which helps people to form and invests in start-ups. After she had been general counsel for six months, she also became interim chief operating officer. “I absolutely loved my time at Entrepreneur First and I was learning so many things every day,” she says.
But in 2021 the pull of the renewables world proved irresistible and she seized the opportunity to join Anesco, which develops, designs, constructs, operates and maintains large-scale battery storage facilities and solar farms in the UK and beyond.
“I’ve always been passionate about using my legal skills to combat climate change, so I was thrilled to join a company that’s committed to driving the transition to renewable energy.”
Victoria is now working across the whole deal life cycle and, as part of a three-strong legal team, her responsibilities are broad, including everything from M&A and compliance to acting as company secretary.
“There is a lot to juggle. You have to work out what will cause problems later on if you don’t do it now”, she says. Here, Victoria recognises the importance of her experience at Clifford Chance. Working on huge, complex transactions for the firm, she learned the invaluable project management skills that continue to help Victoria ‘plan, prioritise and execute’.
Having had such a positive and bonding experience with her old team at Clifford Chance, she keeps firmly in touch. She also regularly connects with the firm professionally, often asking for or giving informal advice or recommendations. While working at Entrepreneur First, Victoria used Clifford Chance’s award-winning LIFT programme, which offers paid summer internships to our future trainees. “I had a LIFT trainee in my team, and it was such a benefit”, she says. Victoria also enjoys being part of the in-house lawyers’ network set up by fellow alumnus Benjamin White, founder of Crafty Counsel.
“It’s important to be open-minded about future career opportunities because there are so many different paths that lawyers can now take.”
In terms of guidance to lawyers starting out, she thinks it’s vital to be both mindful and open-minded. “Carefully consider if your current role is fulfilling and, if not, think about what changes you can make or whether you need to go somewhere else to find that fulfilment”, she says. Victoria also thinks it’s important to be open-minded about future career opportunities because there are so many different paths that lawyers can now take, from start-ups to the third sector in everything from purely legal to broader strategic and business roles. “It’s less about your particular skill set, more about what you want to do with your life,” she concludes.
