AUDE Business Partner profile

Browne Jacobson LLP is a national law firm with five regional centres in Birmingham, Exeter, London, Manchester and Nottingham. With a deep commitment to the education sector and a close alignment of strategies, Browne Jacobson is delighted to become AUDE’s latest Business Partner.

Always ahead of the curve, Browne Jacobson provides fresh ideas and out of the box thinking. In the rapidly changing legal, regulatory and commercial landscape, they support education institutions of all sizes and are prepared for, and take advantage of, any opportunities (both domestically and internationally) that come their way.

As one of the country’s leading (and largest) law firms operating in the education sector, clients benefit from a true partnership approach with their multi-disciplinary practice, with services designed to assist with their bespoke needs – from construction projects, employment issues and funding matters, to protecting commercial intellectual property, health and safety, and disputes.

Browne Jacobson’s Higher Education (HE) team, led by Bettina Rigg and Dominic Swift, recognise that it is more important than ever that institutions can rely on specialist and dedicated lawyers that understand the competitive, challenging environment in which you operate. They pride themselves on working with senior leaders, management teams and in-house legal counsel to support them to enable informed and strategic decision making and identification and management of risk.

Examples of their work with UK HE institutions include:

• Assisting a UK-based HEI to make available laboratory space for Covid testing, with a focus on managing the health and safety risks associated with this.
• Providing advice in relation to the procurement of a new engineering facility for a university in the Home Counties where the specialist plant and services were an integral part of the project.
• Proactively enabling the Midlands Engine to stimulate a broad-ranging conversation on the harnessing of green energy, not only in the region but for organisations to export nationwide and internationally.
• Acting for a developer on a project to deliver 550 new student beds for a midlands-based university, along with new and flexible academic facilities. Whilst the project structure meant that the developer took design, funding and delivery responsibilities, under a lease and lease-back structure, the commercial terms and scheme design took account of student needs, with critical dates for delivery adhered to in order to meet the university’s marketing and availability deadlines.
• Working with the Energy Research Accelerator to assess the many competing types of technologies for sustainability measures and to identify which of those are likely to be capable of delivering the desired green objectives within a reasonable timescale and at affordable cost.
• Engagement and committee leadership of the Nottingham Green Partnership which aims to make Nottingham net carbon neutral by 2028.
• Advising universities on various issues in relation to student accommodation – including but not limited to student defaults, evictions, relocations and related the health and safety related aspects.

Browne Jacobson provides a comprehensive range of legal services to institutions including, but not limited to:

• Banking, finance and funding
• Commercial services
• Constitutional and governance advice
• Corporate legal services
• HR and employment matters
• International projects
• Intellectual property 
• Procurement
• Property and estates
• Regulatory compliance (incl. health and safety)
• Research, knowledge transfer and innovation
• State aid

Known for giving practical advice, having strong market knowledge and being easy to use, proactive and prepared to ‘give a view’, please do contact the team to discuss your bespoke needs: 

Dominic Swift
Partner
e: Dominic.Swift@brownejacobson.com
t: 0121 237 3980

Bettina Rigg
Head of HE and Partner
e: Bettina.Rigg@brownejacobson.com
t: 0330 045 2268