Emily Reid, Partner, Head of Fintech and Innovation at Hogan Lovells, speaks to Shanny Basar about the importance of having diversity of thinking, the excitement of working with fintechs, staying at the law firm for nearly 25 years and the importance of poetry.
Reid is an English graduate and during the pandemic lockdown she set up a poetry class at Hogan Lovells. She said: “It’s good to let your mind go in different directions and reading poetry requires a different response which pushes aside your desire to be entirely logical.”
She explained it was also a good way to keep in touch with colleagues and also fitted in with her approach of encouraging diversity of thinking.
“In order to be the best kind of lawyer you can be, you need to engage with people who think differently, such as fintech entrepreneurs, and consultants, who come at the same problem from a different angle,” Reid added. “I find it frustrating if I am dealing with someone whose focus is too narrow and I probably have a bit of a reputation for pushing boundaries, but I really encourage that type of thinking.”
One example of pushing boundaries is that Reid was responsible for the decision to launch Hogan Lovells’ consulting business in 2016, which she leads as a complement to the Financial Services legal practice. Reid’s experience had convinced her that the industry was heading in the direction of law firms offering a wide range of services and having a consulting team working alongside lawyers would be a powerful proposition.
“Our lawyers are better because the experience and insight we gain from working alongside our consulting colleagues enables us to provide much more considered advice,” she added.
Lawyers do need to be academic and understand what the law says, but Reid believes they can give perfect legal advice which is impossible to put in place operationally. She said: “I think we save our clients a lot by thinking practically.”
Fintech Mentor Program
In October 2022 Hogan Lovells opened the application period for its sixth annual Fintech Mentor Program to provide innovative new firms with up to £25,000 in free legal and regulatory consulting services. The 2023 program is open to fintechs at any stage of development, from start-ups to more established growth players. The program, previously known as the Global Fintech Mentor and Momentum Program, has invested more than £1m in over 30 fintechs.
Reid said the program has allowed the law firm to engage with small startups as one of the challenges for fintechs is to get good legal advice at an affordable price. Legal advice is important as fintechs cannot launch until they have regulatory authorisation, which can take years. As a result, Reid explained that the financial services industry is one of the last to be disrupted by technology because an investment needs to be made in understanding the regulatory framework.
She explained that Hogan Lovells investment in the program also provides important dividends in engagement and involvement, and being able to see trends at a given moment in time, as the sector can change very quickly. Hogan Lovells has a history of involvement in fintech as Reid said it was the first law firm to become a global partner of Innovate Finance, the independent industry body that represents and advances the global fintech community in the UK, back in 2015.
“Another important thing for me in particular, and I know my colleagues share this view, is that working with highly driven, intelligent, creative entrepreneurs is really stimulating and I’ve always thought that lawyers should be those things too,” Reid added. “It has proved to be an exciting part of our practice for everyone involved.”
Engagement with the fintech community has also been valuable for Hogan Lovells’ work with major financial institutions. They are enormous firms with legacy systems and millions of customers, and are eager to digitize as much as possible, and the law firm can advise them through that journey. Reid continued that the Fintech Mentor Program also helps her keep on top of regulatory change in the financial services sector which allows her to help clients react in a constructive way, and see possible opportunities.
“Every time we look at a regulatory change, we are looking at how the change can make the business more efficient or the products better, so there is a positive outcome at the end,” Reid said.
Companies that have taken part in the mentor program include Banked, which is building global payment network Pay by Bank; Updraft, which lowers the cost of credit; Floww, which aims to make buying and selling shares in private companies, assets and funds as easy as trading public stocks; and insurance specialists WeCovr.
Hogan Lovells’ program is interested in women founders and ESG, but not to the exclusion of other things. Rising interest rates and inflation have led to a cost of living crisis, so finding ways in which customers can be supported is also an area of significant interest. Reid said: “We are open to anything that grabs our imagination.
Banked, an alumnus of the program, announced it had raised an additional $15m in funding in November 2022 as a result of an oversubscribed Series A earlier last year led by Bank of America. Byron Lichtenstein at investor Insight Partners said in a statement that Banked has a unique strategy in partnering with commercial banks and payment service providers, in addition to the fintech’s product capabilities.
Reid said: “Hogan Lovells is different from some other law firms because we love it when some of our clients hit the big time. Fintechs have global ambitions and some clients on the program are now expanding abroad which is really pleasing.”
Career
Reid joined Hogan Lovells in May 1998 and said she has stayed at the law firm because she really likes it and has never felt like she was standing still. When Reid joined the firm had about 16 partners, which has grown to approximately 800. In 1998 Hogan Lovells had one London office and now has about 40 offices in all the major financial centers. She described herself as being very lucky to have travelled a huge distance by not moving anywhere.
“It always had the reputation for being friendly and collaborative and I have been very lucky to have worked with people who I like and respect enormously and done fantastically interesting work,” she added. “I am very engaged in client relationships, was on the board a couple of times and have chaired our citizenship panel so I have had lots of different roles as my career progressed.”
Reid was listed as ‘Leading Individual’ for Legal 500, FinTech UK 2021 and was named ‘Women in FinTech Powerlist 2019 in the Senior Leader Category’ by Innovate Finance. She has always been focused on the retail end of financial services which she described as “very odd” at the time as not many law firms covered retail. The segment was considered unglamorous, and not very profitable, but she explained that over the last 10 years some competitors have woken up to the fact that this is something they significantly lack in their practices.
“It was a brave strategy in the long run as fintech involves a revolution in different ways of making payments and the growth potential will continue to be huge,” she said. “The things that we have focused on turned out to be a bit of a trump card.”
One of the things that Reid has really enjoyed in her career is building up a network of people doing interesting things. For example, she worked on Egg, an early online bank, and a lot of staff moved on to Zopa, the world’s first peer-to-peer lender.
“That involved some groundbreaking legal work to navigate the regulatory framework,” added Reid. “You build up a reputation and it’s very precious to us that we were associated with groundbreaking developments in the sector.”
Reid attributes her success to a combination of being an expert in an important area, real enjoyment in meeting people and building up personal connections, and curiosity about what is going on and how it affects people. Reid said she tries to talk informally to clients as much as possible to ascertain their biggest worries.
“I need to come away from every conversation with a client having learnt as much as they have, if not more, so listening has also played a huge part as well as being relentlessly driven to think about new things,” she added. “You can also be the most brilliant lawyer on the planet but to build up a good practice you need to enjoy working with other people and enjoy helping them to succeed.”
She acknowledges this might be a controversial opinion, but Reid thinks the women in her firm contribute more across the board than their male counterparts – because they are the ones who are always willing to do things in addition to core business.
“I am interested in a lot of things, but I don’t think that I lack focus, and that is not always perceived as a strength,” said Reid. “If you are single-minded on one objective that might be a more effective way to get to the top, but I don’t think it gives you a better career. You won’t enjoy it as much and you won’t contribute as much either.”
Reid believes the pandemic has revolutionised the approach to agile working and will help improve diversity. More women have entered the legal profession than men for decades but Reid said the challenge has always been promotion.
Reid concluded: “My advice to anyone is to specialise, become an expert and really identify what interests you. I think you should try to make your own luck and work out where your opportunity lies, rather than waiting for people to show you the path.”
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