Veramed was founded in 2012 by Emma and Matt Jones. A people-focused clinical research organisation and certified B Corp, it helps pharma and biotech companies obtain the clinical data services they need to accelerate studies in a variety of therapeutic areas. Providing its clients with quality data throughout the clinical trial process, from data collection through to post-reporting and submission, Veramed is proud to be a leader in the data management, biostatistics, and programming space.
Headquartered in London, Veramed has a global team of Statisticians, Programmers, and Data Managers and offices in the UK, US, EU, Ukraine and India.
Veramed was supported in their legal work by Charlotte Jones – a paralegal who, alongside her paralegal work, was taking a Legal Practice Course (LPC) with a view to becoming qualified as a solicitor.
Charlie Chhoa-Wilson, Veramed’s Finance Director was keen that Charlotte receive the support she needed during this process and was looking for someone to act as Training Principal, to mentor her, check her work and sign off on her work experience as she completed her training requirements. As he said at the time, “My main challenge at the moment is that we have a first-class paralegal working with us and doing her LPC, but we don’t have an in-house solicitor who can sign off on her work experience.”
Whoever came into the business to fulfil this role needed to be an experienced, senior in-house solicitor, able to support Charlotte during her LPC and training and familiar with the broad range of legal requirements that a business like Veramed deals with. Charlie categorised these requirements under corporate work (company secretarial, mergers & acquisitions, due diligence, setting up in new jurisdictions, and compliance & governance); commercial activity (negotiating commercial contracts with clients & suppliers, NDAs, external audits and commercial property leases); Data Protection; Intellectual Property and other legal work such as employment contracts and post-termination restrictions (PTRs).
Kirstie Penk, TLD’s COO, spoke with Charlie after connecting on LinkedIn. Hearing his requirements, she recommended Amanda Fogg, a highly experienced Client Legal Director working at TLD. Not only did Amanda have a broad range of in-house legal experience in a variety of industry sectors, but crucially she had supported a number of trainee solicitors, in particular at retail company, Jacques Vert. Like Veramed, they had recruited an ambitious paralegal who had completed her LPC but had been unable to secure a training contract. With Amanda’s help they were able to help her achieve that goal with the result that the business had a highly engaged, committed qualified full-time lawyer who was able to grow with the business.
Charlie was impressed with Amanda’s expertise and relevant mentoring experience. He was also attracted to TLD’s service model which enabled him to engage Amanda’s services on a part-time, retained basis. Charlotte could benefit from the consistent support of a senior lawyer, without the business having to pay for a full-time or permanent resource. The fact that Amanda could be engaged for as little as two days a month and be available at times that suited the business was a deciding factor in choosing The Legal Director.
Amanda fulfilled two key functions at Veramed.
Primarily, her role was to mentor and support Charlotte and guide her through the process of becoming qualified. This involved overseeing work and being there as a sounding board for Charlotte when she needed a second opinion or could benefit from the advice of a lawyer with significantly more experience. Amanda offered particular support on areas of law that Charlotte was less confident with, like employment law, double-checking initial drafts of responses to queries from the HR team, for example. Amanda also worked with Charlotte to give guidance and training on data protection and gave her the opportunity to attend meetings/listen into some calls to gain experience.
The traditional route of qualifying is to obtain a training contract at a law firm. Charlotte took the more unconventional pathway of Equivalent Means, a route to qualification introduced by the SRA in 2014 to enable qualification in-house. This requires applicants to demonstrate that they have at least two years’ legal experience in three different practice areas, all of which must be evidenced in supporting documentation. The applicant must be able to demonstrate that they have been effectively supervised and that the training they received is of the level and quality a trainee solicitor would undertake in a traditional training contract.
Amanda said the process was “extremely arduous” with little guidance forthcoming from the SRA. She recalls, “Charlotte submitted around 200 pieces of evidence of the work she’d done, each of which had to be summarised and tied back to one of the 12 Practice Skill Standards that she had to meet. I had to read and comment on, and then provide a reference for, each piece of work. It took months to go through all this and then complete the application form. The SRA then came back with some questions, so she had to submit more documents.” Amanda supported Charlotte through this entire process, and having submitted all requisite documentation in the summer of 2024, she finally got SRA approval and was admitted as a solicitor at the beginning of 2025.
Alongside this training/mentoring role, Amanda also undertook some of the complex legal work that the business had to deal with that were, at this stage, beyond Charlotte’s experience level.
The support and guidance Amanda has given to Charlotte has been invaluable. Previously, they had been unable to find a supervisor who could sign off on the full gamut of legal work that an in-house lawyer typically encounters. Amanda, with her breadth and depth of legal knowledge could support Charlotte across all the areas of law that she had to deal with. More than that, Amanda offered emotional support, practical help and careers advice. Charlotte is very grateful for this, “Amanda has been, and continues to be, a great support to me. I can turn to her when I need a second opinion or have a question that I’m not sure about. As a mentor, she is inspirational and I really value having her guidance to help me when I am deciding on the best approach to issues that arise in the business. Since working with her, I have grown in confidence and experience.”
The help Amanda provided in negotiating the complex procedure of getting qualified was a distinct benefit for the business. Nobody in-house had any prior experience of the process and would have been able to check Charlotte’s work or sign off on her experience. Also, the collation and submission of the necessary paperwork was very time-consuming and would have been a huge distraction from core roles for anyone within the business. Charlie testifies to this, “It was a huge relief to have Amanda’s help with Charlotte’s qualification. We wanted to give Charlotte all the help she needed in the process and Amanda was the ideal person to help with that. It was a very involved and time-consuming process. Amanda and Charlotte were completely on top of it – I was able to leave it entirely in their capable hands and concentrate on my own work.”
The fact that Amanda was able to act in this function and also perform complex legal work for the business was a great additional benefit. The business did not have to rely on private practice solicitors for this work, saving a considerable amount of money and time. Working in-house, Amanda also had the distinct advantage of understanding the business already and was able to give pragmatic, commercial advice aligned with the business’s goals and risk appetite.
Veramed have been able to access this resource on a flexible, part-time basis that has given them continuity of support without the burden of employing someone permanently or relying on external law firms. They’ve been able to flex the support up and down when needed and are still benefitting from ongoing support for Charlotte now she is qualified. Charlie said, “Amanda fulfils multiple roles for us. She has been a great support mentoring Charlotte and helping her through qualification. She has also helped us out with some big contracts. To get this help from one person and be able to engage this support for the time that works for us has been ideal. We’d have been paying significantly more if we’d had to rely on external law firms and we’d never have found all we needed in one person. The TLD service model has been the optimal solution for us.”
The Legal Director is a fully regulated legal consultancy. Its purpose is to increase access to General Counsel services by offering a flexible, predictably priced model that provides businesses with strategic experts on a part-time basis, seamlessly integrated into their leadership teams.
As well as being able to undertake a business’s legal work and advise on strategy, our lawyers are also available for ad hoc projects and mentoring junior team members. If you would like practical, pragmatic, hands-on support to help a trainee or junior lawyer to grow in confidence and knowledge, please contact us on 020 3056 8538 or info@thelegaldirector.co.uk.
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