About Us

Our Story

When we were researching how best Lextel could serve the legal market, our first thoughts were not around what law firms needed but what their clients were asking for.

As legal editors, we had spent many years creating content for and about the buyers of legal services so we consulted with in-house counsel as well as law firm marketing teams in the UK, US, Singapore, Ireland, France, Australia and Hong Kong.

While speaking to law firms was very helpful in identifying how Lextel might assist them, it was our discussions with banking and corporate counsel that made it clear there was a major gap between what clients wanted in terms of insights and thought leadership and what was being offered to them.

As one UK law firm marketing director said there was a disconnect between what clients perceived as valuable and what law firms were producing.

Firms were only likely to give insights which assisted clients when that was part of formal advice.
There was little attempt to provide sector-focused and tailored content.
And firms were missing out on the opportunity to demonstrate how they were adapting to the changing demand for their services in terms of innovation or diversity.

On the law firm side, marketing and BD teams were struggling to get lawyers to engage with clients through content and to get data on what was working. If the latter was not there, the former was harder to change.

We thank firms for their feedback. Lextel has been created not only to help firms deepen their relationships with clients and prospects but also to help firms work more collaboratively so that partners, associates, business development and Marcomms teams benefit from a diverse and complementary skillset in driving their client relationship development.

The Benefits of Working With Us

t

Access to specialist advice

We only focus on marketing and business development for legal services. This gives us a deep understanding of the needs of law firms and their clients which a generalist agency cannot match.



Fixed fee arrangements

We provide fixed not hourly rates so that you know what your spend will be and we work to deliver on agreed performance indicators without incurring additional charges.



Save time and resources

Our submissions team streamlines directory processes to produce high-quality submissions so fee earners and BD teams can focus on client work. Our thought leadership teams show you how to make efficient use of fee earner input and how to use technology to measure and optimise returns on investment.

Q

Avoid ‘spray and pray’ marketing

We undertake research with target clients to ensure that your team is addressing the current challenges of clients and prospects and delivering content which builds new relationships.



Motivate your teams

Engaging lawyers to undertake business development is not just a case of offering financial incentives. Our programme builds on their professional skills to motivate and inspire lawyers to undertake business development with a programme tailored to their capacity and needs.



Track your return on investment

You cannot manage what you cannot measure. With our inbound marketing tools, you can track engagement, RFP and tender outcomes, campaign performance, client feedback and new business wins.

Free Consultation

Would you like a free consultation to discuss your project in confidence?

Book a Consultation

Our Team

Combining legal industry expertise with digital marketing specialists, our team brings a data-driven approach to legal marketing and business development.

Stephen Mulrenan

PARTNER, APAC & EMEA

Stephen is an editor focusing on banking and financial compliance, M&A and capital markets with 20 years’ experience in the legal publishing field. He has most recently been a senior content editor for FT Live and the International Bar Association having previously worked as Managing Editor of Compliance Insider and AsiaLaw in Hong Kong. He was launch Editor of Asian Legal Business in Sydney and managed successful annual law awards in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Singapore and Sydney. He was also Editor of The Legal Insider for Lexis Nexis and Editor of IFLR 1000.

ACADEMIC QUALIFICATIONS

BA Hons International and Political Studies (Coventry University)
International Student Exchange (Rowan College of New Jersey, US)
The Frank Denning Memorial Award (University of Vienna, Austria)

CONTACT DETAILS

T: 44 20 7193 7248
E: smulrenan@lextelpartners.com

Richard Forster

PARTNER, EMEA

Richard began his editorial career with International Financial Law Review, which he edited for three years launching the M&A and global equities surveys and where he launched the IFLR Awards for Asia. He subsequently became Managing Editor  for IFLR 1000 and International Tax Review and then Group Publisher for Legal Media Group, where he was responsible for Euromoney’s legal publishing and events division with teams in London, New York and Hong Kong. He has written for Euromoney, Infrastructure Finance, Euroweek, IFLR, International Tax Review and the Financial Times and has been an editorial adviser to the World Bank, ITU, Asian Development Bank, IDB and OECD. He is a qualified solicitor and worked for SJ Berwin & Co in London and Brussels and in-house at Schlumberger in Paris.

ACADEMIC QUALIFICATIONS

Maîtrise (LLM) in French Law (Université de Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne))
LLB Hons (King’s College London)

James Nurton

PARTNER, EMEA

James has worked as an editor and journalist for 21 years specialising in intellectual property law and practice. He was Editor of Managing Intellectual Property from 2000-2017 managing all editorial content for the magazine and online including the annual rankings of the world’s IP law firms. He launched the conference newspapers for INTA, AIPPI and AIPLA events and has originated and moderated conferences, webinars and awards dinners for Managing Intellectual Property and organisations including EPO, WIPO, EUIPO, INTA, ECTA, UCL-IBIL and Fordham IP Institute. He is a member of MARQUES Communication and Membership Team and was an INTA Committee member.

ACADEMIC QUALIFICATIONS

MA Historical Research (Birkbeck College, London)
BA First Class Hons Modern History (Oxford University)

CONTACT DETAILS

T: 44 20 7193 0781
E: jnurton@lextelpartners.com

Jessica Seah

LEAD EDITOR, APAC

Jessica has worked in the legal industry for over 12 years, both as a marketing and communications adviser and as a legal journalist. She was most recently a senior marketing and communications manager at Norton Rose Fulbright (NRF).

Jess has particular expertise in the Asia-Pacific market. She helped with the launch of the Asia outfit of Law.com in 2011 and prior to that wrote for Asian Legal Business. Jess went in-house in 2014 and spent seven years working with Herbert Smith Freehills, K&L Gates and NRF.

Her key strengths are around crisis management, developing regional communication plans, and devising and executing major regional campaigns by marrying business and marketing objectives and ensuring results are measured and optimised. Jess has significant experience and demonstrable success in building infrastructures and best practices for legal directories, award submissions and social media engagement. At the firms where she worked, she secured numerous coveted industry awards, new directory rankings and promotions, and media coverage. She delivers training on media engagement, social media and submissions.

Jess has worked in Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore and the UK.

ACADEMIC QUALIFICATIONS

BA Journalism and Public Relations (Murdoch University, Australia)

Diploma, Law and Management (Temasek Polytechnic, Singapore)

Nathalie Burn

CONTENT DIRECTOR

Nathalie is a Solicitor who trained at Allen & Overy and qualified into their Litigation department where she remained for ten years. She then worked as a Knowledge Management Lawyer, first at Slaughter and May and then at Simmons & Simmons, before moving to a legal training platform (Legal Network TV, which was part of the then-College of Law) where she worked as a Writer-Presenter of legal training programmes for the legal profession. More recently, she was involved in contributing to, and editing, the Allen & Overy client newsletter Litigation and Dispute Resolution Review and has also worked for LexisNexis as a Legal Editor for Halsbury’s Laws. Nathalie speaks fluent French and German.

ACADEMIC QUALIFICATIONS

LLB (European) from Exeter University (including one year studying German law at the Universität des Saarlandes)

Cindy Goh

LEAD EDITOR, APAC & MENA

Cindy is an experienced business development and marketing professional with 8 years of experience in the legal sector.

Prior to relocating to Dubai, UAE in 2020, she was regional business development manager at Norton Rose Fulbright in Singapore, where she was responsible for BD and marketing efforts across key Asian markets. Her strengths lie in working with key internal stakeholders in high-value pursuits and to drive integrated BD and marketing initiatives across sectors, practices and jurisdictions.

Cindy also has significant experience in building bid infrastructure, events, client relationship management, business research, growth strategy planning, and profile raising campaigns in relation to legal directory/league table/award submissions, thought leadership and digital marketing.

Willem Fast

PARTNER, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

Willem joined Lextel in 2020 as a partner and has over 15 years’ experience in working with governmental, corporate and legal clients driving their business development through strategic marketing campaigns and inbound programmes.

Having started his career at Baker McKenzie, Willem has since held a number of leadership roles at UBM, Autonomy, Hewlett Packard and Oracle. He holds a Master’s Degree in Economics from the University of Amsterdam, and speaks Dutch, English, German and Spanish.

At Lextel, Willem leads the business development team working with client law firms to blend content and technology to deliver their business goals.

CONTACT DETAILS

T: +44 7576 675766
E: wfast@lextelpartners.com

Yun Kriegler

LEAD EDITOR, CHINA/APAC

Yun has over 15 years’ experience in the legal industry having worked as an editor and journalist for Asian Legal Business and for nine years as Asian and International Editor of The Lawyer. She has a postgraduate degree in law from the University of New South Wales as well as a bachelor’s degree in Media and Communications from the University of Adelaide. She is well known to regional firms for her ability to grasp the market trends, regulatory updates and industry developments in Asia, particularly in Greater China, and puts her experience to the benefit of firms by drafting and producing compelling submissions for some of the world’s fastest growing legal markets.

Mak Mengal

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR

Mak is an experienced business development professional, having worked in the media and events marketplace for over 12 years.

Before joining Lextel, Mak worked on content marketing campaigns for blue chip corporates including Siemens, HERE, Mastercard, Deutsche Telekom, EY, Novo Nordisk and Nokia. He brings a wealth of best practices and digital marketing skills to the legal sector including inbound marketing skills, social media expertise and the use of data analytics, tools which companies routinely employ in their client relationship management.

At Lextel, Mak assists law firms to deliver their business development goals through account-based marketing and thought leadership campaigns.

CONTACT DETAILS

E: mak.mengal@lextelpartners.com

Nigel Savage

ASSOCIATE PARTNER, NORTH AMERICA

Nigel has 15 years’ experience of legal directory publishing and in-house directory management. He was brought in by International Financial Law Review to relaunch the IFLR 1000, refocusing it on corporate finance, and then spearheaded the launch of the Legal 500 US. He subsequently was hired into a senior marketing role for leading US-based global law firm, Morrison & Foerster, where he was responsible for the firm’s worldwide strategic approach and response to directories, awards, and rankings providers. Nigel’s experience in legal publishing and in-house has given him a unique insight into what legal directories expect from law firms during the submission and research process. Before entering publishing, Nigel worked for the transaction management department at ABN Amro.

ACADEMIC QUALIFICATIONS

BA Hons Law, Modern Languages (French and Russian) (University of Cambridge)

Jonathan Andrews

LEAD EDITOR, EMEA & LATIN AMERICA

Jonathan is an experienced editor, copywriter and communications professional, who has edited publications for the World Bank, UN, OECD and ITU. He was editor of Cities Today, which focuses on innovation in the public sector covering transport, IoT, energy and smart cities. With regard to content marketing, Jonathan has advised companies such as Deloitte, IBM, Ericsson, Accenture, Siemens, Mastercard, Uber and PwC. Jonathan is a graduate of the University of Sydney with a bachelor’s degree in Economics and International Relations.

Folkert Leffring

DIGITAL MARKETING MANAGER

Folkert Leffring is a multilingual marketing professional with over a decade of experience in the international media industry. He focuses on lead generation for public sector vendors though integrated inbound campaigns and has worked with multinationals as well as scale-ups and start-ups. Folkert holds a Bcom Marcom degree in International Business and Languages from the Utrecht Business School and a Digital Marketing degree from ESIC Business School.

Teresa Tam

LEAD EDITOR, APAC & EMEA

Teresa has more than 25 years of integrated marketing, communications, translation, project management and media relation experiences in the private and public sectors in Hong Kong. She has spent the last 15 years in the legal sector, playing a regional business development role for firms such as Herbert Smith Freehills, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, Norton Rose Fulbright, Minter Ellison and Mayer Brown. Teresa is very experienced in tailoring bilingual pitches and preparing marketing materials as well as promoting firms through directories, league tables and awards submissions. Previously, she was an editor of a bilingual trade magazine and two in-house publications. Teresa speaks Cantonese, Mandarin and English.

ACADEMIC QUALIFICATIONS

Master’s degree in Communications (Hong Kong Baptist University)

Neeraja Balakrishnan

LEAD EDITOR, APAC & EMEA

Neeraja is a qualified lawyer with over eight years’ experience working in some of India’s leading law firms. Most recently she was a senior associate at AZB & Partners, where her work focused on international arbitration in particular for insolvency and regulatory disputes. During her time at AZB, Neeraja wrote articles and created thought leadership for the firm as well as organising training and seminars and drafting submissions.

Neeraja has a master’s degree in law from Harvard Law School and brings with her an in-depth understanding of both law and law firm operations.

ACADEMIC QUALIFICATIONS

LL.B, ILS Law College, University of Pune

LL.M, Harvard Law School

Mike Nash

ASSOCIATE PARTNER, EMEA

Mike spent 11 years at The Legal 500 where his final role was Chief Editor for all of the Legal 500 editions. Previous to this he was Editor of the Legal 500 Europe, Middle East & Africa. Having been intimately involved in developing the ranking methodology and training programmes, he knows what researchers are looking for and thus what the law firms can do to be persuasive. Mike can provide insights and solutions that may not be apparent to someone who is new to a directory-facing role, or whose function in that capacity is only one part of a wider role.

ACADEMIC QUALIFICATIONS

BA History (University of Southampton)

Rachel Southcott

DIGITAL MARKETING MANAGER

Rachel has more than 6 years’ experience as a digital marketing practitioner working with firms in financial and professional services. Prior to working with Lextel, she was an Executive Marketing Director at a fintech startup where she recruited and led a team of five having previously worked in a marketing role for a UK law firm. She specialises in advising law firms on inbound marketing including data building for CRMs; social media management; and how to use content to build authority with clients and prospects.

Rachel uses HubSpot to create inbound marketing campaigns across different platforms delivering high-quality content through automated workflows. She advises firms on how to use technology to improve their marketing returns and how to implement data-driven strategies to provide measurable results.

Richard Boal

GRAPHIC DESIGN AND ART DIRECTOR

Richard has been a graphic designer for 17 years and specialises in driving business growth with content marketing and branding campaigns. As well as designing advertising artwork, magazines, apps, e-books, event materials, brochures, website materials, white papers and reports, he has worked on content marketing campaigns for Philips, Siemens, Citi, PwC, Ericsson, NEC and IBM. He has designed reports and magazines for UN agencies and development banks including UN-Habitat, KfW, China Development Bank and Agence Française de Développement and has worked on B2B titles for smart cities and climate and infrastructure nance. He has worked in both design studios and for publishers having studied Art, Design & Technology in the UK and Spain. He is proficient in Adobe Design: Indesign, Photoshop and Illustrator.

Mark Agnew

LEAD EDITOR, EMEA & APAC

Mark lived and worked as a journalist in Hong Kong for eight years and has recently moved back to London. He worked with Lextel partner Stephen Mulrenan to launch the Compliance Insider magazine, helping law firms understand an evolving legal landscape. Mark then moved to The Corporate Treasurer producing daily content and a monthly magazine.

Following The Corporate Treasurer, Mark founded the Outdoor sports section at the South China Morning Post (SCMP). Under his guidance, the section grew by 100 per cent in terms of readership year on year in its first four years. During his time at the SCMP, he also held training sessions for other journalists on interview techniques and story structures.