O Shaped

🎉 Out Now - The Oracle, Newsletter of O Shaped 🎉 Take a look at the latest edition of the O Shaped newsletter, The Oracle, where we share some of our highlights from 2024, including: - Dan Kayne’s reflections on 2024 - Discover the O Shaped RFP Toolkit – the new collaborative way of buying and delivering legal services. - Meet the Future – learn more about the inspiring individuals who have joined our Future Board. ….and so much more! We would also like to extend our season's greetings and thank you for your continued support. O Shaped is about people and your support makes it all possible, thank you. Stay tuned for more exciting updates from O Shaped in 2025. https://lnkd.in/e2YN3NwN

🎉 We are super excited to announce the O Listers for 2025!! 🎉 We would like to congratulate them for making a difference to improving the profession for those who are in it, those who use it and those who are entering it. We are so proud of what you do to make the profession a better place by putting people first. Thank you and well done to: Ailsa Longmuir Amy Marren MBE PLY Benjamin White Coriander Davies Emma Bower Emma Jordan Helen Field Jemilla Wallis Jessica Booker Joan Scott Lynette Smith Natasha Doulia Shreya Vajpei Sue Manik Find out more about these awesome people at https://lnkd.in/ecepYQuV Thank you for everyone who nominated someone for the O List and thank you so much to our working group and judges who continue to give their time to support the O List. 🎉 We look forward to celebrating our O List 2025 at our party in February 2025! 🎉  In the meantime, please reach out to congratulate them. Thank you again to our working group and judges - Dan Kayne Adam Curphey Greg Bargeton Kirsty Medway Natalie Salunke Sarah Clark Usha Puri-Dewage Natasha Ballantine Vivienne Inmonger Sarah Hemsley Luscinia Brown-Hovelt Sarah Gull Kate Tyers John Rowland Rami Jerrow #olist #peoplefirst

🚀 🚀 We will soon be officially revealing the O Listers 2025🚀 🚀 🔢 Let’s put the process in numbers this year 📢 138 nominations; 🚺 64% of nominations were for women; 🏢 50% of nominations were for in-house team members; 🏛️ 26% of nominations were for private practice team members; ⚖️ 63% of nominations were for lawyers;  🛜 The remaining 37% was split between various other roles such as consultants, recruitment, tech providers, learning and development specialists, business development professionals. 📒58 made the shortlist; 🧑⚖️ 9 judges reviewed the shortlist; And..... 🏆 14 have become the O Listers 2025! More about the O Listers to come asap so stay tuned!! Special and extra special thanks to the working group who have been double awesome over the last few weeks. Kirsty Medway Adam Curphey Natalie Salunke Sarah Clark Usha Puri-Dewage Emma Thomas Greg Bargeton

The Future Board is such an important part of the O Shaped mission to make the legal profession better for those who are in it, those who use it and those who are entering it. So we are very proud to announce a refresh of the Future Board and introduce our 5 new members! Congratulations to Alice Smith Charlie M. Lewis Quinn Matthew Cleary Rochelle Inbakumar who all went through a competitive selection process and will now proudly represent O Shaped across the legal industry. Special thanks to our Future Board Chair Harry Mellor who led the recruitment process as well as the current Future Board members Alastair Nuttall Alice Hardiman Holly Moore Rami Jerrow, and O Shaped Chair Catherine Baker and Steering Board Lead Sophie Gould for their support during the recruitment process. Please do reach out to congratulate our new Future Board members. We will be sharing more about them here over the next few days, but they are all super keen to represent the various communities of the legal profession in support of the O Shaped mission, so do get in touch. #oshaped #futureofthelegalprofession #peoplefirst #bemoreO https://lnkd.in/eGBDpqkj

Talking About My Gen’O’ration   Every other month, together with Browne Jacobson, we host a webinar for trainees, apprentices and paralegals from the in-house legal community.   The attendance list and engagement is growing each time.   So far, we have always interviewed a senior in-house leader about their career journey and asked them to share top tips for with the audience.   However, this month we are changing it up….   We are lucky to have both Letícia Ribeiro (Trainee Solicitor at Tesco) and John Rowland (General Counsel at Elysium Healthcare) who are going to share their experiences and top tips with each other and the audience together.    It’s a cross-generational, 360 degree, forward and reverse mentoring/talk/sharing type thing – or for shorthand, Talking About My Gen’O’ration.   If you are (or have in your team) a trainee, paralegal or apprentice and work in-house, please feel free to join us! We have sessions like this every other month and would love you to join the Ommunity.   For more details please get in touch with [email protected] and we can add you to the invite.   Claire Stripp Dan Kayne

Last night our wonderful group of judges had the almost impossible task of selecting the final O List 2025. The judges - made up general counsel and a representative of the O Shaped Future Board - reviewed the shortlist which had been narrowed down from over 150 submissions by the O List Working Group (Adam Curphey Natalie Salunke Sarah Clark Kirsty Medway Usha Puri-Dewage Greg Bargeton). Our judges were given the entries only and had no idea of the names, roles or organisations of those put forward. We will be announcing the 2025 O List early next month and look forward to celebrating with them (and many others) at the O Listers party in the new year! Thank you once again to all of the judges who kindly gave up their time to decide the final O List – Natasha Ballantine Vivienne Inmonger Sarah Hemsley Luscinia Brown-Hovelt Sarah Gull Kate Tyers John Rowland Rami Jerrow Keep an eye out for further updates as we near the big reveal! For information about the O List please click here https://lnkd.in/eqbS5Kbc

Last week, Dan Kayne and Heather Key [she/her], Chief Legal Counsel, Serco presented O Shaped tendering at the Buying Legal Council Conference.   O Shaped has been working on a more collaborative RFP approach for over 2 years now. The traditional way of tendering is outdated, leading to a ‘them and us’ approach to legal service buying/selling. The O Shaped RFP puts genuine collaboration front and centre.   Heather talked about her recent RFP which include many elements of the O Shaped template, including how she brought the providers together for collaborative workshops, allowing the Serco team to really understand who would be best placed to partner with them going forward. The O Shaped RFP documents can be downloaded here: oshaped.com/rfp   Tag Sean Weller, Heather Key [she/her], Nicholas Cranfield Helen Lowe Victoria Mee Mark Turner Christian Fahey Damian Taylor Greg Bargeton

We love hearing stories from in house teams about how they are embedding O Shaped into their day-to-day legal lives.    So we were delighted when Myshele Shaw, Senior Legal Counsel and Head of Legal Optimisation at Euroclear, shared with us how the legal team have adopted O Shaped.     There are some real gems in this case study, including:   - Embedding O Shaped as part of a team transformation; - The value of having O Shaped ambassadors; and - Planning their own internal O List for 2025!   Thanks to Myshele for sharing and to the wider Euroclear team for their pioneering approach to O Shaped.   If you have a story about how you are using O Shaped, we would love to hear from you and share it more widely. Dan Kayne Greg Bargeton

It’s beginning to look a lot like O List…..... This time next week our wonderful group of General Counsel are getting together in a ‘secret location’ in central London for the final stage of judging for the 2024/25 O List. The nominations have already been reviewed by The O Shaped O List Working Group and shared with the judges on a no names, no roles and no organisations basis. This blind selection process remains the only one of its kind in the industry. We will then announce the O List 2024/25 before Xmas in readiness for the O List celebration party early in the new year where we will showcase the talents of the latest group of brilliant O Listers. For all information about the O List please take a look at our website – https://lnkd.in/eqbS5Kbc Natasha Ballantine Vivienne Inmonger Sarah Hemsley Luscinia Brown-Hovelt Sarah Gull Kate Tyers Rami Jerrow Natalie Salunke John Rowland Sarah Clark Adam Curphey Greg Bargeton Kirsty Medway Usha Puri-Dewage Photo from our O List Party in February celebrating our O Listers 23/24. Anna Kettle Archanna Ramu Baljinder Singh Atwal Ben Furlong Carly Thorpe Charlotte Hall Christine Baer Efftichia Dower Emma Haywood Emma Levin George Grammer-Taylor Jeanette Burgess Joanna Hughes Karen Watton Katie White Kenny Robertson Laura West Leila El Gharbi Lucie Allen Paula McMullan Sarah Clark Scott Brown Tom Lyas Xavier Langlois #Olist #Oshaped #peoplefirst #bemoreO

🎆 Exciting News! Official Launch of the O Shaped RFP Toolkit🎇 It’s been more than 2 years in the making, involved dozens of in-house leaders as well as our partner law firms Dentons and Browne Jacobson and is now available for download. 🚀 The O Shaped RFP Toolkit 🚀 Most GC want to work in partnership with their external legal services providers and not just as another transaction, so the O Shaped community has come together to design a more modern approach to buying legal services. If you’re interested in using or learning about the O Shaped RFP, please download the toolkit here - oshaped.com/rfp So many people to thank in bringing this to life, but in particular Greg Bargeton Victoria Mee Helen Lowe Christian Fahey Damian Taylor Nicholas Cranfield Mark Turner Mark Hickson Martin Hughes Claire Eldridge Amy Marsden Amy McConnell Andrew Fleming Andrew Cooke Ashley John Aurea Garrido Bnar Spencer Candice Dawe-Poultney Carina G. Eleanor Babiker Eoin Smaill Ewart BaxterHeather Key [she/her] Kate Maton Elizabeth Daveney Luisa de Gouveia Maria Passemard Michael H Mollie Stoker Suki Ritchie Stuart Kelly Let us know what you think!