Regional law firm Michelmores has promoted one of its chartered legal executives to partner for the first time in its 135-year history.
Caroline Alexander, who works in the firms’ tax, trusts and succession team, is among the latest round of partner promotions at the firm, which also includes four of its female senior associates. 
The promotions take the firm’s partnership to 72 and increase its proportion of female partners to more than 40%.
Caroline joined Michelmores, which has offices in Bristol, Exeter and London, in 2017 after working at Clarke Willmott for the previous 13 years.
Her promotion to partner makes Michelmores one of just three firms with offices in Bristol to have chartered legal executives (CILEx) partners – the others being Clarke Willmott And Lyons Davidson.
There are around 20,000 CILExs in England and Wales. Some 7,500 are working as qualified chartered legal executive lawyers and the others as either paralegals or legal professionals.
More than 100,000 people have chosen to take the CILEx route to becoming a lawyer since the scheme was introduced in 1989, although only around 250 have made it to partner level in a law firm.
Caroline, who specialises in the administration of high net worth and complex estates, many of which have international elements, is keen to focus on ‘home growing’ talent at Michelmores and supporting people who may need to, or choose to, take an alternative route into the law.
The three other partner promotions at the firm are Emily Reeve, who works in the restructuring and insolvency in Bristol, Charlotte Curtis, from its Exeter property litigation team, Elizabeth Newson, from the transactional real estate team in the Exeter office.
Emily’s practice focusses on contentious insolvency matters and she acts for insolvency practitioners in both a personal and corporate insolvency context.
She has been recognised as ‘one to watch in the Legal 500 directory and in the law firm rankings produced by Chambers and Partners.
Charlotte acts for corporate owners and occupiers, high net wealth individuals, developers and estates. She handles contentious property law in both the commercial and residential sectors, acting in an advisory capacity to seek and find the best solutions to resolve disputes at an early stage.
Elizabeth, who joined the firm as senior associate in 2018, specialises in strategic land and residential development and advises land promoters, regional and national housebuilders, local authorities, land owners and landed estates.
The partner promotions were announced alongside the promotion of three senior associates - Neil Mason (construction & engineering), Anthony Reeves (corporate – tax) and Erica Williams (agriculture).
Michelmores managing partner Tim Richards said: “Congratulations to our new partners for this milestone achievement in their legal careers.
“In 2018 we set ourselves a target for our partnership to be at least 30% female, and I am delighted to say that we are now far beyond that, at over 40%.
“While we recognise that there is more work to be done to reach gender parity, this is a great achievement and is testament to the many talented female lawyers across our business.
“This group are experts in their fields and provide excellent service to our clients, and I am delighted to see them step forward into the partnership.”
