Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner

Partner

Victoria Blanchard is a partner in the firm’s Real Estate Disputes Group which is ranked in Band 1 by Chambers UK and in Tier 1 by Legal 500. With over 15 years’ experience of contentious property matters, mitigation of development constraint risks and injunction litigation, she routinely advises high profile developers such as Crosstree, Edge Technologies, Grosvenor, Landsec, Canary Wharf and Aviva on a range of issues arising from development, particularly in relation to rights of light, mines and minerals and other easements and restrictive covenant issues. Victoria leads the firm’s rights of light centre of excellence and has particular expertise in advising on and negotiating the terms of rights of light indemnity policies.

Victoria also works closely with BCLP’s transactional lawyers, providing strategic, commercial advice in the context of property investment, joint ventures, lettings, development financing and forward fundings.

Victoria is well known for her contributions to both the real estate sector and the overall legal field. She has a strong interest in legal innovation and technology and has led various projects involving both internal and external specialists. She has been instrumental in developing AI technology that enables the registration of thousands of preventative Light Obstruction Notices to safeguard the development potential of earmarked development stock. Victoria has also pioneered the use of collaboration platforms and document automation tools to assist with large scale rights of light due diligence exercises and subsequent project management and documentation of large numbers of rights of light settlement agreements. One of these projects was awarded “Best Use of Technology” at the British Legal Awards for the pioneering use of artificial intelligence (AI). Her work was also featured in a BBC series about the use of AI across different industries.