- Europe
- Leadership
Pinsent Masons has elected Richard Griffiths, its UK-based global head of property, as managing partner, succeeding Laura Cameron with effect from 1 November, according to Australasian Lawyer. Griffiths, a planning and infrastructure consents lawyer, will lead a firm that turned over £703m in FY26.
Contested September vote hands the top job to property head Griffiths
The election was contested. Cameron, the incumbent, sought a second term against Griffiths and UK head of employment Helen Corden in a vote earlier in September, per The Global Legal Post.
Griffiths joined as a trainee in 2002 and made partner in 2012. He led the planning and environment practice for four years (growing it more than 54 percent and expanding it into Australia, the Middle East and Europe), then took the property group two years ago and grew it 13 percent, according to the Law Society of Scotland. Picking an insider after a three-way race points to continuity of strategy rather than a change of direction, as LawFuel noted.
Cameron, a Pinsents lawyer since 1994 and the first woman on its global board, became managing partner in May 2023, succeeding John Cleland (The Global Legal Post).
Griffiths's planning field sits alongside the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 and 305,000-home housebuilding target
Griffiths's planning background sits next to a market where planning and real estate work is growing. Labour's Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 received Royal Assent on 18 December 2025, reshaping England's consenting regime throughout 2026, directly in Griffiths's field of energy, waste and transport consents (Pinsent Masons Out-Law).
The OBR found those reforms would push housebuilding to its highest level in more than 40 years, 305,000 homes a year by 2029/30, lifting GDP by 0.2 percent (The Planner). Reforms on that scale point to rising planning and real estate work, the kind the property group handles, which in FY26 included Royal London Asset Management's £197m Fradley Park acquisition and a €330m Spanish student-housing portfolio sale (Pinsent Masons).
Real estate has been one of the hotter areas of partner investment across the UK. Birmingham alone saw 20 lateral real estate partner hires between July 2025 and July 2026, 24 percent of all partner-level investment in the city, with Trowers & Hamlins and Mayer Brown among the firms adding to their teams (Law Society Gazette).
Pinsent Masons added 27 lateral partners and opened Warsaw as PEP fell
The leadership change lands on an investment-led balance sheet. In FY26 the firm added 27 lateral partners, promoted 23, launched a Cape Town delivery centre and a China joint venture, and upgraded premises in Manchester, Glasgow and Sydney (Pinsent Masons). It opened in Warsaw in February with a six-partner team hired from DLA Piper, Dentons, Greenberg Traurig and CMS, its first office in Central and Eastern Europe (Legal Business), after opening Riyadh and Shenzhen the year before (Iberian Lawyer).
That spending shows in the numbers. FY26 revenue rose 3.3 percent to £703m, but profit per equity partner fell about 7 percent to £740k as the firm funded expansion, technology and lateral recruitment (Scottish Legal News).
Griffiths and Maciver form an entirely new leadership line-up at Pinsent Masons
Griffiths takes over weeks after John Maciver, head of a financial services sector that grew over 20 percent across two years, became senior partner on 1 October, succeeding Andrew Masraf (Law.com). That pairs a property-led managing partner with a finance-led senior partner, both trainees of the firm, Maciver since 1995 (Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce).
The reshuffle sits alongside recent partner movement. Nicholas Holmes, long head of Ashurst's ECM team, joined in October 2025, and Susie Daykin, Travers Smith's head of pensions, joined in January 2026, reuniting with Dan Naylor, who moved the previous September (Non-Billable). Clare Tunstall, head of IP and life sciences, is leaving this autumn (The Global Legal Post).
Both top roles have changed hands within weeks, giving Pinsents a new top team entering FY27 as PEP has slipped (Law.com). The firm has promoted a real estate and planning lawyer to run it as English planning reform and housing targets look set to reshape that practice's work.
More Europe legal market news.
