Home Appointments & Contracts Clarion strengthens team with another four appointments

Clarion strengthens team with another four appointments

Another four lawyers have joined the Clarion team.

With two years’ experience, Santino Stifanelli is the latest recruit in the Leeds law firm’s corporate practice. He advises on a broad range of corporate transactions such as mergers and acquisitions, business sales, joint ventures and corporate restructuring. Santino also advises directors and shareholders with their legal requirements, including directors’ duties or shareholder agreements. Having worked in-house, he has extensive experience in corporate and commercial matters.

Rebecca Simpson has joined Clarion’s employment practice. Over the last two years, she has gained expertise in dealing with the end of employment relationships and represented clients on a wide range of contentious matters, including employment tribunals proceedings and judicial mediation, acting in particular, on behalf of trade unions and their members. Rebecca’s areas of expertise range from advising on employment documents and policies, to advising on employee relations issues, business immigration and the people aspects of corporate transactions.

The banking and finance team at Clarion has added Francesca See to its ranks as an associate solicitor. Francesca has experience of providing advice on a range of funding transactions including development, corporate and real estate finance matters. Having previously worked as a paralegal at a national firm, Francesca has gained six years’ legal expertise and will help support the teams corporate and leveraged finance offering.


Finally, Leah Pattison further strengthens the commercial team. Over the last four years, she has worked for one of the leading firms in Newcastle upon Tyne. She has experience of reviewing and drafting a range of commercial contracts including supply agreements, terms and conditions of sale and purchase, agency agreements and confidentiality agreements as well as preparing various GDPR compliant policies for companies and providing corporate support work. Leah works across various sectors including the technology, manufacturing, pharmaceutical and retail sectors.

Roger Hutton, joint managing partner of Clarion, comments: “Our team is continuing to expand as we bring on board new talent to ensure we are able to support the growth of existing clients as well as servicing new clients.

“We are fortunate to be located in such a vibrant legal community here in Yorkshire and to benefit from the very positive reputation Clarion has established as a great place to work and as a firm that really looks after its clients.”

Clarion has a 263-strong team, including 29 partners, and was last year recognised in the Sunday Times ‘Best Companies to Work for’ list – it was the highest ranked law firm in the UK and achieved the highest ranking of any company in Yorkshire.