Business Services

Katie  joined Browne Jacobson as a trainee in 2007 and has nearly ten years of experience as an education lawyer. In her early career (2010), she completed a secondment to the in-house legal team at The Girls’ Day School Trust. She now advises maintained schools and academy trusts on a range of education law issues including governance, admissions, safeguarding, school intervention and parental complaints.

Katie has been heavily involved in the academy conversion programme following the implementation of the Academies Act 2010. She has advised on the corporate and commercial aspects of hundreds of academy projects including the creation and expansion of multi-academy trusts and the conversion of church schools, special schools and pupil referral units. She was the lead lawyer on the first hospital school conversion in the country. She now focuses largely on group projects, working closely with a number of multi-academy trusts on their expansion, including academy merger and re-brokerage projects.

Katie has also developed a particular area of expertise in school intervention and Ofsted advice and leads on this part of the firm’s practice. She provides advice to schools and academies who may be vulnerable to formal intervention measures from their local authority or the Secretary of State, including launching judicial review proceedings. She also supports schools with challenging Ofsted inspections and seeking delay to publication. As part of her work in the area of school intervention, Katie contributed to representations made to Parliament on the Education and Adoption Bill.

Katie regularly speaks at seminars and national conferences including, for example, the Optimus Child Protection conference and National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) Annual Conference, as well as delivering bespoke training to governing bodies and senior leadership teams on topics such as exclusions, governance and safeguarding. She has also featured in the education press having written articles for publications such as Schools Week, The Voice (an Institute of Schools Business Leadership publication) and Attendance Matters and has been interviewed for education pieces in The Guardian and LexisPSL. She also regularly contributes to the Association of School and College Leader’s (ASCL) Leader magazine and has written briefing notes for the NAHT and Optimus as well as Browne Jacobson’s own newsletters and website. She has also delivered webinars on topics such as digital safeguarding, parental access to information and re-brokerage.

Katie leads a mentoring scheme with Greenwood Academies Trust which offers career and pastoral support to students at local academies, including one-to-one mentoring and work experience.

Solicitor – admitted September 2009 Legal Practice Course – 2006 (passed with distinction) LLB (Hons) Law – 2005