Consultants Overview
Esterase consultants come from a range of professional backgrounds including:
Alex von der Heyde
Alex is an experienced business leader and Practice Manager who has run companies in many sectors for over 20 years. This extensive knowledge is further supported with an MBA from Cranfield University, giving a significant depth of awareness of business management challenges. He has managed a number of professional services organisations including a Legal Consultancy and a niche Solicitors Practice, organisations with annual revenues ranging from £0.5 million to £36 million.
Andrew Weaver
Andrew has 20+ years of executive management experience within legal and wider commercial sectors. For 15 years he worked as a Barristers Clerk, 8 as a Senior Clerk. In addition to cross-sector experience and an MBA, Andrew has a tacit understanding of the unique characteristics and challenges faced by modern-day Barristers Chambers. He is able to provide clients with a distinctive and sophisticated insight to help confront some of the challenges ahead.
Jonathan Wilkes
Jonathan is a Chartered Accountant, having qualified at Price Waterhouse and with over 18 years’ experience as a finance director. Initially working full-time in the media sector, including being FD of an AIM-listed media distribution company, he started his own private practice offering a flexible, part-time finance director service to SMEs. Since then he has acted for a wide range of clients including media, technology and FSA regulated companies.
Paul von der Heyde
Paul has a background of 30 years of experience as a Chartered Accountant and much of that as the Senior Partner of a London based accountancy practice. He had a wide client base including those in the legal sector. Subsequently he spent 11 years as Managing Director of a medium sized sales and business solutions company, at first privately owned and then a subsidiary of an international group. He now provides a range of financial, executive and non-executive support to clients in a range of areas. He brings an understanding of the bigger picture and strategic consequences for clients. He has an enthusiasm for enterprise improvement and a passion for people and developing their talent.
Jane Slevin
Jane is an executive with significant experience in business and operational management, quality management, business process, systems and data analysis, all combined with strong communication skills. Jane’s background and experience have given her a range of key skills required to deliver process improvement and business management, including development of quality control and compliance procedures. Her diverse range of experience across many sectors allows her to address the new challenges faced in the legal sector in a commercially sensible manner, developing management and quality processes that will achieve the outcomes focused requirements of the SRA Code of Conduct, while avoiding unnecessary bureaucracy within the organisation.
Helen Williams
Helen is a Graphic Designer with extensive expertise designing marketing, sales and project material. She has the experience and skill to interpret business ideas to create designs with visual clarity and project manage these from concept and design to final print. Helen is an expert in branding development covering design work for of all aspects from logos, business cards, and working documents to external publications.
Andy Miles
Andy is an experienced website developer with an impressive portfolio of past clients. He has significant experience of search engine optimisation. In one case he redesigned the existing site of an organisation providing legal and commercial advice in the Construction sector leading to an increase from approximately 250 visits per month to over 16,000 visits per month within 6 months. Andy’s combination of clear design and appreciation of what works to maximise visibility on the internet allows us to offer significant marketing benefits to our clients.
Ian Duncan
Ian practised for 18 years in the property sector, gaining a broad range of experience in both the public and private sectors. Ian has significant experience of the challenges faced in working with the public sector and its tendering processes. This included being responsible for tendering and negotiating all the legal contracts and delivering a 6Mw CHP station in a city centre location, serving multi-phase, multi developer sites to be completed over a twenty year period. Ian brings this experience to clients looking to improve their chances of success when tendering for work.
Barbara Spoor
Barbara Spoor LL.B (Hons), is a Complaints Management specialist who studied law prior to joining The Law Society. For over 9 years she has focused on resolving complaints made by clients about their solicitors giving her an in depth understanding of the challenges faced by the sector and the manner in which the regulators manage matters. She is naturally fully conversant with the code of conduct and was also specifically trained to deal with 'misconduct' issues by practices.
