People: The latest West Midlands hires

Insurance risk and commercial law specialist BLM has announced four promotions in its Birmingham office, based in Temple Row, including two appointments to partner.

The promotions span two of the firm’s seven business streams, with two promotions in claims solutions and two in speciality and financial lines.

Yuling Kao

In total, BLM promoted 12 associates to partner and 23 solicitors to associate level this year, across nine of the firm’s 13 offices.

Promotions in Birmingham
Emma Taylor (partner)
Verinder Bedi (partner)
Elizabeth Rhead (associate)
Yuling Kao (associate)

Matthew Harrington, BLM senior partner, said: “In what has been a challenging year for many firms, it is rewarding to celebrate the success of our teams across offices and specialties. As we grow and diversify our business streams, focusing on areas of strength and opportunity, it’s vital we have the right people in place. Our new partners and associates embody the future of our firm, and have enabled us to continue to provide clients with exceptional expertise and service, during a time of great change for many businesses.

“It is my priority to provide our teams with the ability and opportunity to progress within their careers as part of our succession planning strategy. In particular, recognising our junior partners and associates, and the energy, ideas and commercial awareness they bring to our clients. I’d like to congratulate all colleagues.”
 

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Birmingham-based PJA has welcomed engineering and regeneration expert Dave Woolley as a director with responsibility for the company’s land development division.

Nigel Millington, joint managing director at PJA, said: “Land development is an exciting growth area for us and we can’t think of anyone better to have on board than Dave thanks to his knowledge, expertise and reputation. We look forward to him developing our service offer further and expanding our client base nationwide.

“Despite the challenges of the past few months, business remains strong at PJA with demand coming from both private and public sector clients. The addition of Dave further bolsters our positive outlook and ambition to grow in order to support our clients and partners.”

Woolley added: “PJA has a clear focus to create better places through design, with an agile client-focused team of industry leading professionals.

“I’m looking forward to delivering exceptional results for our existing and new land development clients including landowners, land promoters, developers and local authorities.

“Our role is to assess sites for development risks including access, contamination and flooding, and design infrastructure solutions that will help secure planning consent and facilitate placemaking.”

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Two newly-qualified solicitors have begun their careers with Shropshire law firm Lanyon Bowdler.

Jamie Porter has joined the dispute resolution team, while Adam Hawkes has qualified into the private client department – both are former trainees with the firm.

Kay Kelly, training partner with Lanyon Bowdler, said: “We would like to welcome Jamie and Adam, both have worked really hard to qualify and are excellent additions to the team.

“We are very proud of our training programme and the firm has been successful in helping a host of trainees begin their journey in the legal profession.

“Jamie and Adam are great examples of how our programme is helping to produce our future solicitors.”