Jamie Fraser

He is also an experienced director of legal operations and has held this role in-house and also consulted with various clients.

He has a fantastic range of experience from his time at Magic Circle / white shoe law firms, as well as his years in-house at global blue-chip / FTSE 100 companies.

Jamie enjoys getting to know the issues and priorities in a business and helping them to succeed.

His recent in-house experience means that he really understands the challenges being faced by a modern legal function, which resulted in him setting up our unique Legal Operations practice.

My real passion is helping people to get stuff done – putting my shoulder to the wheel and getting projects over the line to completion. But I also like stepping back and asking the simple questions, such as ‘why are we doing it like this?’, and then seeking to come up with new and interesting ways to resolve issues.

Jamie trained at Freshfields in London and undertook a secondment at IBM during this time. He subsequently moved to the US firm, Arnold & Porter, where he spent six years as an associate.

He moved to IBM in 2007, where he focused on large-scale IT outsourcing projects. He was also the UK subject matter expert on data protection.

He subsequently moved to Smiths Group Plc in 2011 and it was in his first role as Divisional General Counsel that, in his words, really awoke his interest in how the business functioned, and not just the legal side of it. He spent time in the oil and gas division as Associate General Counsel, getting to know the operating side of the business, as well as gaining insight into a new sector.

His last three years at Smiths Group were spent as Director of Legal Operations & Innovation, getting to grips with how the engine of a legal function really worked. He worked on a number of projects focused on saving money and driving efficiency, some of which involved implementing new technologies.

Alongside his role as Consultant Solicitor at Jurit, he runs a legal operations consultancy business, NineNineSix Solutions, where he advises corporate legal functions and law firms on structure reorganisation, legal spend analysis, process improvement, panel reviews, lawtech solutions and legal design. This service is now being offered through Jurit.

Jamie is part of Mosaic Mentoring, a mentoring system for the in-house legal community, and also coaches a number of recent law graduates.