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Module 5: Equality Before the Law
This module will examine reducing inequalities, with a particular focus on gender equality. We will consider reducing inequalities overall under SDG 10, including ways lawyers can help clients achieve equal outcomes. Further, you will learn more about SDG 5 and how international organisations like the World Bank promote legal reform to support the achievement of SDG 5 in practice.
Why should you attend this session?
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Leading Expert Speakers with Practical Knowledge
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Case Studies
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Take home resources
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Hybrid in-person / online delivery
Equality in Finance
This session will look at how financial transactions can be structured to ensure a reduction of systemic inequalities. This will include an introduction to the Business and Human Rights framework, practical application of antimoney-laundering due diligence and overall, how lawyers can advise responsibly.
Women in Business
We will hear from leading thinkers on gender equality in Business and the Law. Gender equality is not just a human right but also crucial for sustainable economic development, which we will explore in depth in this session.
Meet the instructors
Andrew Campbell
Following an early career in a City firm, Andrew accepted partnership in more suburban firm, which he repositioned and established in City offices before joining a reputable Covent Garden practise. However within a few years he had founded and was growing his own Corporate Law consultancy, going on to advise in over 100 client projects on both sides of the Irish Sea (including a number of law firms) on a broad range of corporate and commercial matters. He now advises SME’s in a traditionally litigation and property based firm in Belfast, Northern Ireland, with his three co-partners
As such with over 20 years of corporate law experience in a very wide variety of styles of firm in London and Northern Ireland he has seen first-hand inequality in delivery of expert corporate law advice. One day he might advise a retiring sole trader selling to a competitor, almost giving the business away to achieve a change in lifestyle, the next day a care home seller of multiple care homes for £10m+ with large law firms and due diligence rooms on the other side.
He works with organisations like the Federation of Small Business to ensure a client knows ‘the clock is not on’ until everything is agreed and the client is happy to go ahead. He works with start-ups and SMEs, supporting them throughout their life cycle, helping them to grow their businesses, through acquisitions and organically, at home and abroad. He advises management and stakeholders, advising on routine business matters and in troubled times, dealing with new investors and as they exit.
As a SME adviser, many businesses are owner managed, their access to capital is limited to the high street banks, and they keep costs under tight control. He feels his firm can offer access to excellent corporate law advice ahead of many firms where the advisers are bound by minimum fees, fee monies up front and little flexibility to offer anything resembling a more predictable fee for a transaction. He has experimented with fixed fee arrangements where clients can to some degree pick and choose the extend of a job such as shareholders agreement or other commercial agreement.
As such he feels he is helping to close the equality gap between SMEs’ having to only access the high street non specialist, rather than the highly skilled, highly branded corporate specialists.
Sometimes this takes the form of someone in his circle of contacts requiring informal advice. He has helped recent immigrants to the London to confront and plan through with debt problems, realising often the debtor just needs a supporter to walk shoulder to shoulder with them more than an adviser. He has stood with those unsure of their immigration status as they take specialist advice, realising that helping people be organised and consistent can alleviate much of the attendant mental health risks. He has supported and driven forward various non-profits which work amongst marginalised communities, helping them set the bar higher in terms of probity and accountability.
More specifically, the movement of criminal funds is a huge hindrance to the ability of developing countries to compete equally with their more ‘whitelisted’ neighbours. Andrew has found that anti money laundering regulations are constantly in prominence for solicitors of small law firms, and again Andrew has had many experiences of having to rigorously work through client’s funds sources not matter how urgent the work is being presented as. He needs to ensure his firm does not unwittingly accessorise the movement of criminal gains, destabilising already vulnerable markets and hindering a culture of private investment capital from taking root.
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Rebecca Ego
Rebecca Ego is an analyst of the Women, Business and the Law project. She works on the Labor team and is in charge of managing contributor relationships, coding a subset of economies in the data management system, drafting responses based on Labor data based on inquiries, and presenting the Labor methodology. She also works on the Dissemination team in implementing the Dissemination action plan. Rebecca joined the team in November 2021. Before joining the team, she worked as a Legal Consultant at Expertise France, a French International Development organization in Lebanon. She holds a Master’s degree in International and Comparative Law from The George Washington University Law School and a Bachelor of Law degree from La Sagesse University Law School. She is fluent in French and Arabic.
Liang Shen
Liang Shen is an Analyst of the Women, Business and the Law project. Her current research interests include family leave policies, equal pay, workplace discrimination and financial inclusion. Liang joined the team in September 2020. Before joining the World Bank Group, Liang conducted analysis on tax policies and economic trends in the New York State government. She holds a Master of Science in Economics from Bocconi University and a Master of Public Administration from the State University of New York at Albany. She speaks Mandarin Chinese and is learning Spanish.
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