2021 is looking bright at Hive with these senior appointments
Hive is finishing off 2020 with this awesome news…
1 January 2021 will see Adrienne Trumbull promoted to Principal, Melissa Lyon to Executive Director and Rachel Varghese to Senior Associate at Hive.
Adrienne Trumbull’s ability to build great relationships with clients is evident, especially when you hear clients say ‘we love Adrienne’s willingness to get to know us, what we do, how we do it and what we are about… it makes our lives so much easier’. She assists clients in the health, consumer goods, energy, infrastructure, IT, and telecommunications sectors with their corporate and commercial needs and brings a mix of exceptional legal skills, commerciality and a commitment to working with clients in a way that works for them. This has included further developing our HiveGC+ resourcing option for clients to provide expanded areas of support, and price certainty through value pricing. Adrienne says ‘having worked in-house, it’s important to me to not only have a great relationship with clients, but also a deep understanding of their business and priorities. I love that HiveGC+ reflects this and creates a genuine alternative to the traditional external adviser/ in house resourcing dynamic.’
On her Principal role, she says ‘I am so proud to be joining an amazing group of principals leading an exceptional team. I love Hive’s collaborative mindset, both with our team and our clients, and I’m honoured to be able to play a role in the future of the firm’. Joanna Green, Principal says ‘ It is rare to see the combination of technical skills and broad experience, mixed with the pragmatic, commercial and calm approach Adrienne brings to the firm and to our clients. Everyone loves her and feels confident when she is leading a matter that they are in safe hands. Adrienne is a great promoter of Hive and its values, internally and externally, and it is exciting to celebrate her promotion to Principal’.
Promoting Melissa Lyon to the Principal group reflects Hive’s progressive approach to the delivery of legal services and our focus on improving the experience for our clients. Melissa, who was named Innovator of the Year at the 2020 Australian Law Awards, will continue to build Hive’s consulting practice which provides service, product and strategy design and legal ops assistance using its design thinking based framework, HiveThinkP. As a long-time proponent of the concept of multi-disciplinary teams and the power of collaboration Melissa says she is ‘really excited to be able to provide our clients with a blend of skills that reach beyond legal and provide a much more holistic service offering. It is also extremely fulfilling to be part of a firm which recognises that to improve the experience for our clients we need to think differently about their needs, draw together people with the required skills and design better and creative outcomes to address those needs. I am extremely proud and grateful to work with people who have the right purpose and mindsets to ‘change things up’ in our industry’.
Melissa’s hope is that in the future we will see more firms providing career paths through to the Principal level for people with skills ‘other than legal’ as it will make for a ‘much better experience’ for them and our clients.
Mitzi Gilligan, Principal, says ’Melissa is the embodiment of Hive’s purpose, vision and values. Bringing her into the ownership group is recognition of the fact that a law firm’s success is not only driven by its practising lawyers’.
Seeing our lawyers thrive means a lot to us at Hive. ‘Over the past 5 years, Rachel Varghese has developed a level of technical expertise in energy law and a depth of understanding of our clients’ businesses that is extremely rare and a source of inspiration to her Hive colleagues’ says Andrew Brookes, Principal. She is already considered a trusted expert by our energy clients, known for her ability to solve complex regulatory and contractual problems and her exceptional communication and drafting skills. She works closely with key players in the Australian energy sector providing assistance on complex energy regulatory matters, energy market disputes, major energy contracts and projects. Her positive impact extends well beyond her legal work. Rachel is unusually generous in sharing her knowledge and supporting other young lawyers. She is a major pro-bono contributor, as coordinator of Hive’s Refugee Legal volunteer program and she is also Victoria’s current representative on the national young professionals committee of AMPLA (the energy and resources law association). Rachel says ‘I am excited to be taking the next step in my legal career, and extremely grateful to the mentors I’ve had along the way and the wonderful team that I work with. It’s incredibly rewarding to be doing work that I enjoy, and collaborating with a diverse and highly skilled group of people who all share Hive’s goal of improving the experience of its clients and employees. The firm, and our energy practice, have grown so much over the last few years (weathering the difficulties caused by Covid-19 brilliantly) and I look forward to seeing what 2021 and beyond has in store for us’.