Nabarro’s director of IT Andrew Powell is to take over in April as head of IT at Macfarlanes, filling the shoes of Maurice Millen, who is retiring after almost seventeen years at the top 30 UK firm.
The appointment also follows the internal promotion by Norton Rose Fulbright of Edie Dillon as global chief information officer, taking over from Sheila Doyle, who left in December 2015 for Deloitte. Powell, who was headhunted for his latest role, has been with Nabarro for nine years, prior to which he was director of IT at Brodies between April 2001 and May 2007.
He told Legal IT Insider: “When the Macfarlanes role came up I was immediately interested. They’re a very successful, very focussed practice and it’s a fantastic opportunity to build on Maurice’s work and help shape how they will apply technology to the delivery of legal services.”
He added: “I’ve been at Nabarro for nine years and have been fortunate to work with some great people who have progressed our delivery of IT services in that time. But a lot changes in a decade – iPhones and ISO27001 didn’t exist, life was simple – and there comes a time to move on. We’ve changed most of the technology twice over in that time and in the last couple of years we’ve moved our data centres into hybrid cloud, relocated three offices and introduced agile working. After a rare moment of calm, we’re moving on now to the next major phase. It doesn’t feel right to bail out half way through, so it’s a good time to draw the line and let someone else take the programme on in its entirety.” Nabarro has yet to fill the position.
Dillon, meanwhile, joined Fulbright & Jaworski as chief information officer in November 2011 from Accenture, where over a period of 23 years she held a number of leadership positions within Accenture’s internal IT organisation, including latterly senior executive.
James Dixon, now chief operating officer at WilmerHale, who hired Dillon while an executive director at Fulbright, says on LinkedIn: “Edie is bright, has a bigpicture vision, manages her staff well and to their delight, and is loyal and cooperative. She is clearly eligible for advancement along the IT track and is also well suited for a general management position. Edie is a star.”
This story was first published in the January Legal IT Insider.