Hill Dickinson adds partner capacity with two new senior appointments

Commercial law firm Hill Dickinson has announced two lateral partner hires with the appointment of commercial litigation partner Amanda Burge and corporate restructuring and advisory partner Lemi McAuley. Their arrival brings the number of partner hires across the firm to 18 in the past 12 months.

Amanda Burge joins Hill Dickinson’s London City office from Hamlins, where she was head of dispute resolution for over six years. She was a partner at Enyo Law prior to that. Amanda also headed the dispute resolution sub-group of an international network for several years. With 25 years of experience, she is recognised as a leading individual in commercial litigation and professional negligence and is recommended for contentious construction. 

Amanda brings a wealth of expertise acting for companies, partnerships and high net worth individuals on highly complex disputes, bolstering the skillset and service offering of Hill Dickinson’s London commercial litigation team. 

As well as expertise in shareholder, directors’ duties, partnership and fraud disputes, Amanda has additional specialisms including construction and engineering issues, insurance coverage disputes and IT/software licensing disputes.

Lemi McAuley joins Hill Dickinson’s Leeds office, adding breadth and depth to the firm’s national restructuring and insolvency capability by opening a new team base in the city. He joins the firm from Shoosmiths, where he spent three years as a partner based in Leeds leading a team specialising in corporate restructuring work.

With experience of both contentious and non-contentious aspects of restructuring and corporate insolvency, Lemi specialises in board advisory and transactional matters, including advice on restructuring, turnaround and directors’ duties.

His expertise also lies in distressed business sales, together with all aspects of formal and informal insolvency procedures, including administrations, restructuring plans, liquidations, and receiverships. 

Lemi has extensive experience in advising numerous categories of stakeholder in financial distress situations, including corporate clients, private equity providers and insolvency practitioners. His recruitment expands the specialist service offering of the Leeds Business Services Group. 

Craig Scott, national head of the firm’s Business Services Group, said: 
“As we hit our stride in this new financial year, we are continuing to build senior level capacity in key practice teams across all our UK offices – and the market is taking note. It is particularly pleasing that lawyers like Amanda and Lemi, who have amassed significant experience in their respective fields, are choosing to join us in this exciting phase of our ongoing growth journey.

“I am delighted to welcome them both to Hill Dickinson as we continue to grow our national Business Services Group. The new hires signpost our expansion not only in London but further afield in Leeds where we have just announced our office move to 11 Wellington Place following the rapid growth of the team from three to over 35 employees in the last five years.”