Clair Ruskin-Brown

Expertise 

Clair has 28 years of, post qualified, rich and varied experience in commercial contracts and commercial transactions and business matters. She has experience across a wide range of business types and models both private sector (in-house and private practice) and public sector. Clair thrives on working at pace, under pressure and on making the complex simple and finding the right solution for clients.

Alongside the buzz of day-to-day diligence supporting mergers, acquisitions and sales transactions, Clair focuses on re-defining and re-modelling the future of corporate transaction support and commercial due diligence within Gateley.  

Clair’s overriding objective is to achieve the illusive and combined goals of ‘fast, efficient and excellent’ using the right balance of human expertise and experience, artificial intelligence, and information technology and automation. 

How do you help clients?

I help clients find commercially practical, nimble and unbureaucratic yet legally sound solutions to everyday business operations.  

I am able to blend my commercial in-house experience with my legal expertise to ensure the ‘right-fit’ solution is found, to manage risk whilst keeping the commercial business wheels moving.

In my day-to-day role of commercial technology and data due diligence and corporate transaction support, I am able to quickly recognise the crucial value in a business and identify any matters that present a critical and adverse impact on that value.  

I practice and bring a realistic approach to commercial due diligence, embracing the technical legalities whilst balancing advice about their realistic impact on businesses and their value, to ensure a pragmatic approach to solution-driven due diligence.

Experience

• Assisting on the commercial aspects of the due diligence undertaken to bring Virgin Wines successfully through their Initial Public Offering.
• Project managing and leading the legal team on the legal aspects of numerous high value partnerships and collaborations whilst working in the public sector for an upper tier local authority (that served approx. 810,000 residents, with an annual budget of approx. £500m per annum). These included:
  • partnership with the NHS relating to integrated health and social Care provision;  
  • highways partnership with publicly-listed infrastructure support and service provider for multi-billion-pound highways maintenance and construction provision;
  • establishing a joint venture vehicle and service provision model for education and education support services between the local authority and a publicly-listed UK-based international business process outsourcing and professional services company.
• Advising private undertakings regarding public procurement issues and contracts and procurement processes. By advising clients before their ‘clarification window’ closes and before their bids are submitted Clair has ensured that her private undertaking clients are well placed commercially to win the award without being overly exposed to commercial and legal risks. 
• Championing, exploring and implementing internal projects pulling through technological solutions with the objective of quickening and improving quality and consistency of commercial due diligence and transaction support and driving efficiencies through the technology to reduce legal fees for clients.