Alan is recognised as one of the world's leading strategic development advisers to professional services firms. His client base covers a very wide range of businesses, from some fairly small firms to some of the world's largest. He works throughout Europe and has advised professional firms in the UK, France, Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal, the Nordic countries, Switzerland, Austria, Ireland and Estonia. He also has an extensive client base throughout the US and in Asia Pacific.

Alan assists his clients in developing the means to improve - and sustain - their competitiveness by establishing effective strategic management and leadership processes. He is particularly experienced at converting strategic change into practical action steps, and in helping firms build commitment to the behaviour changes required. He has a deep knowledge of competitive trends in the professional services markets and uses this to assist clients in arriving at a genuinely competitive position. Alan also maintains a research database on competitive trends in the professional services markets of all major jurisdictions. This provides a strong basis in advising firms in different countries because he is able to take into account the particular features of each geographical market as well as provide objective data on which to base his advice.

Alan has been a strategic consultant for his entire professional career and has specialised in working with professional firms for over 20 years. Prior to this he was trained in strategic consulting and analysis, as well as organisational change methods, where he worked on a global basis with major companies and institutions.

Alan is the author of the recently published book Strategies and Practice in Law Firm Mergers. He was recently awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award for his work with professional services firms.

The founder of The Kite Consultancy, now merged into H4 Partners, Julia Chain has over 25 years experience of legal and management roles in both private practice and industry.

Julia began her career as a corporate finance lawyer at Shearman and Sterling, New York. On returning to the UK, she qualified as a solicitor at Herbert Smith and spent the next few years specialising in mergers and acquisitions. In 1993 she joined Garretts, the law firm associated with Andersens, before becoming managing partner in 1994 and the first woman managing partner of a top 100 law firm in the UK. Julia oversaw the growth of Garretts from a small niche practice of four lawyers to a major corporate law firm of over 300 lawyers in just over five years. In 1998 she joined the board of T-Mobile UK as General Counsel and spent six years building one of the UK’s top in-house legal departments from scratch. It now comprises 20 or so lawyers with 40 other staff involved in related disciplines such as regulatory, health and safety, risk and business continuity.

In 2005, Julia founded Kite to provide practical strategic advice to General Counsel and in-house legal teams as well as offering a range of management and client care services to law firms. Apart from advising clients on a broad range of issues, Julia regularly writes for the major legal publications and lectures at high profile events in the legal calendar. She also mentors recently appointed General Counsel and Managing Partners and other senior lawyers. In 2008, Kite merged with H4 Partners to provide an integrated service offering to the entire legal sector.

Julia is a former Deputy Chair of the Commission for Racial Equality (now the ECHR) and is a member of the academic council of BPP Professional Education College, the UK’s leading professional services and training organisation. She is also a Trustee of two major charities.

Hannah is an experienced, results-orientated consultant specialising in organisation, team and individual change and performance improvement. She works primarily within the broad area of change and development with individuals, teams and whole organisations. Much of her work is long term, helping clients to link operational effectiveness with skills and behaviours. She has worked with a wide range of private and public organisations including American Express, BNFL, BT, Camelot, Daimler Chrysler, FSA, National Air Traffic Services, Nestle, NHS, Price Waterhouse Coopers and Starwood Hotels.

Hannah has particular expertise in Group Process work, and draws on a wide range of expertise from Edgar Schein's work on Process Consultation to the Tavistock Clinic’s training in group process. She applies these approaches in a practical and flexible way. Her style is both challenging and supportive.

Hannah qualified as an Occupational Psychologist through studying at Keele University and the University of Hull. She then went on to work at the Post Office, British Telecom and as an Independent Psychologist since 1994. Her early experience working as an internal consultant included Selection, Assessment, Organisation Change and Development. This work included team working and team development, attitude surveys, facilitator training, work coaching and counselling. She is a Chartered Occupational Psychologist and is qualified to administer a wide range of aptitude, ability and personality tests and instruments, and able to design assessment centre exercises.

Tricia Bey is a highly experienced leadership and organisational development consultant. She has worked with numerous senior executives and their teams to improve their effectiveness, their clarity of purpose and their relationships with other parts of their businesses. She has guided many executive teams through complex change programmes to help them deliver increased value to their internal and external clients. She has also guided three of her own organisations through complex change programmes.

Tricia spent 14 years with Deloitte Consulting, seven of those as a partner. She built and led the UK Change Management practice, and spent two years as the Managing Partner of Deloitte’s Dutch consulting practice. In this role she was responsible for restoring the 150-person practice to profitability and merging two separate businesses into an integrated unit. She taught regularly on international management development programmes for clients and for Deloiite’s own consultants. Tricia later spent 4 years as Managing Director of the highly respected School of Coaching, which developed the leadership and management schools of senior executives.

Tricia’s clients over the years have included Anglian Water, BAA, Coutts, Dupont, Eastman Kodak, The Home Office, Lloyds TSB, NatWest, Roche, and Vodafone. She has an Engineering Science degree from Durham and an MBA from The London Business School. This combination, together with experience across the whole spectrum of business functions, enables her to take a broad view of business challenges – recognising the impact that change in one area can make on other areas of a business.

In his thirty years of professional practice, Sean has worked on most aspects of assessment and development in organisations, concentrating on the identification, development and coaching of senior management potential. He is an expert in the design and implementation of assessment and development centres. Conducting individual assessments for senior management positions is a regular aspect of his work.

Until recently, Sean was a Partner in Pearn Kandola, the leading practice of occupational psychologists, which he joined in 1989, and he continues to work with them on a freelance basis. He has designed and delivered assessment and development centres for numerous blue-chip companies, involving hundreds of participants. His major clients have included:

• Professional & Financial Services: Abbey National; Barclays; Ernst & Young; Grant Thornton; HBOS; PricewaterhouseCoopers.
• Manufacturing: Bayer; British Aerospace; British Telecom; Diageo; General Electric; Hitachi/Renesa.
• Public Sector: Benefits Agency, Department of Work & Pensions; Office of Fair Trading; National Health Service; The Pensions Regulator.

Formerly he worked for British Telecom where he was successively Corporate Selection Methods Adviser, and Organisation Development Manager for an operational unit. For a number of years he was Editor of Selection and Development Review. His publications include over 20 contributions to academic and professional journals and book chapters, and he was a contributor to Pearn Kandola’s Tools for Assessment & Development Centres, published by the CIPD.

Philip Brown is a consultant who specialises in assisting law firms both in the U.K. and internationally with strategic development and management issues. He was a senior consultant with Hodgart Consulting and then with Hildebrandt, the U.S. based consultants following its merger with Hodgart Consulting, and now works closely with Alan Hodgart at H4 Partners. He has lectured widely on issues facing law firms, both at partners’ conferences and at public meetings such as the International Bar Association.

Philip is a lawyer by training, having studied at Columbia University in New York and at the College of Law in London. He has been admitted to the bars in New York and New Jersey and practiced as an English solicitor. He was a partner at Wilde Sapte (now Denton Wilde Sapte) in London for 20 years, specialising in international finance. From 1988 to 1994 he was managing partner of the firm.

He also sits as a commercial mediator.

After 15 years as an in-house lawyer, Chrissi moved into consulting services in 2006 with a vision of assisting her clients to improve their own processes and client management. She has an MBA from Cranfield School of Management, where she was awarded the Prize for Strategic Management, and uses her business training in providing solutions to the legal profession.

Chrissi trained with a City firm and has worked in a variety of in-house roles in the automotive and food industries, for both entrepreneur and plc businesses, in the UK and internationally.

In her most recent role as UK General Counsel with DaimlerChrysler, Chrissi led a team of seven advisors in a legal function that covered legal, compliance, insurance and quality process standards. In 2005, she was selected as “One Of The 50 Most Influential General Counsel” in a Legal Business survey.

Per Jansson joined Hodgart (predecessor to H4 Partners) directly after graduating from Imperial College in London and is now in his fifth year with the firm. Throughout the period, Per has worked closely with Alan Hodgart helping to provide strategic and structural advice in more than 100 client engagements

Over the years, Per has worked with a number of the top 50 law firms in the UK and US as well as many leading European firms. He has also worked with several of the top firms in South America. Apart from his work with law firms, Per has also been involved in providing advice for accountancy practices, consulting firms and chartered surveyors.

Jonathan is a lawyer by training and early work experience and a psychologist by current profession. His background combines 12 years experience as a practising Barrister with substantial training as an occupational psychologist. He has a wealth of experience assessing, developing and coaching senior lawyers and other senior executives.

A First Class graduate in Law from Worcester College, Oxford and a University Prizewinner, Jonathan taught Law at the University of Chicago, Oxford and Kings College, London before embarking on a career at the Bar. In his 12 years of practice he specialised in commercial and employment law and acted for a wide mix of private and corporate clients.

He retrained as an occupational psychologist and much of his work consists of nurturing and developing senior lawyer talent. He has coached lawyers from a wide range of firms, including Ashurst, Berwin Leighton Paisner, Bingham McCutchen, DLA, Lewis Silkin, McGrigors, Mishcon de Reya, Nabarro Nathanson, Norton Rose and Simmons & Simmons as well as lawyers in the Government Legal Service and in-house lawyers.

Jonathan also regularly runs or co-facilitates workshops on a range of workplace psychology issues, including coaching, career counselling, individual/personality difference and stress/well-being. He has a breadth of experience in other areas, including 360° feedback, individual assessment and assessment/development centres. He has recently been involved in two large 360° feedback exercises, including an exercise for a national law firm, where he gave feedback to and coached a substantial number of equity partners and the top management team.

Matthew di Rienzo is a qualified barrister with over ten years’ experience of technology and the law.

Having designed the first online same-day law reporting service, he joined Clifford Chance to implement their first online service for clients, NextLaw. In his role as Head of Online Research and Development, Matthew designed and oversaw the implementation of a number of legal information services at the firm. He was then appointed as Head of Knowledge Solutions, with responsibility for the global sharing of knowledge and information across the firm’s intranet and know-how platforms.

Matthew is now a consultant specialising in information management and process improvement in law firms, the courts and in-house legal departments. He is able to use his blend of legal, business and technology experience to bring significant performance enhancements to legal organisations of all types and sizes.

Mark Turner has nine years of experience working with or for professional services firms, specialising in financial and strategic planning advice.

Before joining H4 Partners, Mark held the position of head of business planning for the law firm Addleshaw Goddard. Prior to this he was a senior manager working on strategic planning assignments for Deloitte, where he also worked with the firms’ professional services group clients.

At H4 Partners, Mark specialises in assisting professional services firms both in the UK and internationally with their strategic development and with aligning their organisation to their strategic goals. He helps clients to determine what their competitive position should be by using his strong understanding of competitive developments in professional services markets.

Mark has presented at conferences regarding the competitive context of legal markets and benchmarking of firms’ competitive positioning.

Frances had an early career in PR, marketing, advertising and sales and has been a consultant for 19 years. She has contributed as a strategic consultant and executive coach to many programmes of organisational change, development and leadership, working in many different industries, cultures and sectors.

An expert in all aspects of communicating and relationships, Frances’s interactions with individuals and teams help them to express themselves better and develop conscious, cognitive strategies to achieve more of what they and their organisations really want. She spends much of her time coaching senior managers and directors, helping them to influence colleagues and to improve the quality of relationships with clients or teams. She has coached over 100 Directors, Non-Execs, Trustees, Senior Management teams, other coaches and leaders.

Frances has been designing and facilitating workshops for 15 years, covering leadership, change facilitation, coaching and facilitation skills, partnership and collaboration skills, relationship and communication excellence and a host of other areas for leadership development. Her workshops on building trust often form the foundation for change programmes.

She has also designed and facilitated conferences for groups as large as 350, where her energy and instinct for what enables people to truly learn and engage differently are key factors. She was selected to be part of an international facilitator team for the Implementation Conference and the UN Earth Summit in Johannesburg 2002.

Frances carries out voluntary facilitation and group process work with other charities and non-profit organisations, and is a Senior Tutor at Portsmouth University.