Stone King LLP

Ann Phillips

Ann Phillips is a former Chairman of Stone King, and now works in the Charity & Social Enterprise Team as a Consultant. Her work encompasses all varieties of charity and social enterprise structures, advice on constitutional and governance issues, mergers and restructuring, trading and commercial relationships, dealings with the Charity Commission and other regulators and international operation and arrangements. She also has considerable experience of military charities, as well as heritage and fine arts organisations and endowed charities of all kinds, many of long establishment, including Royal Charter charities.

Graham Burns

Graham is the Head of education team and his particular skills include advising on complex public sector procurements (where he has particular expertise in the education and local authority sectors) and major commercial transactions. Graham also offers substantial experience of major and complex public private partnership deals, including completing the largest schools partnership contract in England for Northamptonshire County Council.Graham has a substantial practice in the academies sector, a history that began with him acting for the West London Free School on the very first free school funding agreement. He is also recognised as one of the education sector’s leading innovators having acted for a broad range of sponsors developing Multi-Academy Trusts and Umbrella Trust structures.

Hannah Kubie

Hannah is a Partner specialising in charity law and governance and social enterprise. Hannah advises charities and social enterprises on incorporation and registrations, governance issues, commercial operations and mergers and transfers. Her particular expertise is in contracts and grants and she acts for a number of publicly funded organisations. She frequently advises on collaborations and partnerships, procurement and trading.  She is also experienced in the establishment of academies and free schools, both as part of single model and multi-model academy trusts. Hannah works closely with the firm’s Corporate team in the area of social finance, which includes advising organisations seeking to raise funds and advising charities on their social investments. An active member of the Charity Law Association, Hannah recently participated in its working party on the Law Commission’s consultation on a new social investment power for charities.

Julian Blake

Julian has specialised, for over 30 years: in Social Enterprise; Charity; Responsible Business; Public Service Reform and Innovation; Co-operatives and Stakeholder Participation; blending business and public benefit legal disciplines. He has been especially involved in the development and maturing of Social Enterprise, Social Finance, Social Value, and Social Impact Investment and Measurement and their application to Public Policy. He promotes public value, purpose and partnership in Public Procurement and Public Sector Contracts and State Aid and Public Sector Grants, championing the Innovation Partnership. He promotes a distinctive approach to contracts as practical working agreements (as noted in the 2020 Kruger Report to Government on Civil Society). He works particularly in relation to: Community Transport; Education (particularly Further Education); Health and Social Care; Rehabilitation and Justice; Renewable Energy; and Employment and Youth Services  

Melanie Carter

Miguel Pereira

Miguel joined the firm as a partner in May 2014 having been a partner at another City of London firm for several years. He is a corporate and commercial lawyer and advises on a wide range of corporate transactional matters including mergers and acquisitions, start-ups, shareholders’ agreements, joint ventures, restructurings and corporate borrowings. In addition to general corporate and commercial work, Miguel has developed a particular expertise in partnership and LLP law and is recognised as an expert in this area by the leading legal directories. He has significant experience advising partnerships and LLPs across various sectors on their constitutional arrangements and has also advised individual partners on their joining or leaving of partnerships.  Miguel is a fluent Spanish speaker and acts for a number of Spanish clients in relation to their interests in the UK.

Rosamund McCarthy Etherington

For more than 25 years, Rosamund has utilised the law to create, merge or restructure charities and not-for-profits, set up efficient funding arrangements and work alongside as well as challenge the decisions of regulators. As well as advising on long-term and technical charity law issues, she also advises charities in the eye of the storm, helping them to navigate through a regulatory, governance and media maze. Rosamund has a track record in defending the rights of charities and campaign bodies. She also advises political bodies and campaigners on non-party campaigning electoral law and is the co-founder of the Electoral Law Forum. Rosamund is a trusted advisor to the Chief Executives, Chairs, and Boards of charities.  She works across many sectors, including children and young people, international development, education, the arts, faith, animal welfare and health. Rosamund’s clients include start-ups, household name charities, international foundations, membership bodies, royal charter bodies and corporate foundations.

Stephen Ravenscroft

Stephen is a Partner and Head of Stone King's national Charity practice. He has specialised in charity and not-for-profit law since qualifying as a solicitor in 1997. Stephen acts for clients of all sizes, helping them with a wide range of issues that includes new charity registrations, incorporations, governance matters, mergers, trustee training, dealings with the Charity Commission and fundraising matters. Stephen has enormous expertise in advising on Academy projects. Over the last 10 years Stephen has worked with more than 50 sponsored Academies and more than 100 converter Academies.  This depth of experience means Stephen is often able to save clients time and fees by anticipating potential issues at the earliest stage.

Tim Rutherford

Head of Charity & Social Enterprise Sector Group

Tom Murdoch

  Tom acts for a wide variety of charities and social enterprises on diverse legal issues including: novel charitable purposes, spin-offs from the state, structural re-organisations, including governance reviews, amendment of royal charters, trading issues, charity campaigning, charity appeals, mergers and charities specialising in health and social care.  Recent charity work includes: acting for the Royal Society, the National Trust and English Heritage; first registration of new charitable purposes Wikimedia UK (the organisation underlying Wikipedia) and local Healthwatch (local authority public health responsibilities); closure of The Diana Princess of Wales Memorial Fund; assisting DEFRA with the establishment of the Canal and Riverside Trust, the successor organisation in England and Wales to the British Waterways Board; and  participating in both the NCVO’s and the Charity Law Association’s reviews of the Charities Act 2006 and the potential recognition of public benefit journalism as a charitable purpose.