About Us
Collaborative. Cost-effective. Uncomplicated.
What makes us stand out?
Passion.
We are passionate about helping to resolve legal problems and achieve success for our clients – providing high quality 'big law firm' work in a boutique setting. We are agile and entrepreneurial (like many of our clients). We want to ensure the service we offer our clients is commercially focused and kept as simple as possible.
No Nonsense.
We take technical – and we make it non-technical. We talk in terms of personal and societal impact, not just legal implications – as we said, big picture stuff. No jargon, no-nonsense, or blinding anyone with legal science. We give direct answers to the key questions: So what? So, what does that mean to me? So, what does that mean I should do?
Time is money.
We are acutely aware that our time is your money, so we do not want to waste either. And, of course, it's what we put into that time that makes us stand out.
Alison Hastie
Orange Grove Law is led by Founder and Director Alison Hastie LLB (Hons), CIPP/E, a leading technology lawyer who delivers exceptional legal advice and representation to a diverse range of tech start-ups, software SMEs and corporate business clients.
Alison read English & European Law at Queen Mary University of London and Leiden University, Netherlands.
Since qualifying as a solicitor in 2001, Alison has worked as in-house counsel for Heinz and British Gas and in private practice advising a wide range of UK and international clients including Xerox, Tate & Lyle and Capita.
Alison is deeply experienced in contract law, commercially savvy and super-efficient. Warm and friendly, steely and fiercely ambitious for her clients (now that's a great combo!), Alison is hugely perceptive and generous with her client service time, quickly building trust, which enables her to get under the skin of a client's business, tap into its DNA, understand and clarify the risks, focus on the priorities and identify the steps that need to be taken. She is straightforward, doesn't ‘sit on the fence’ and gives clear and precise recommendations when they matter the most.
On a personal note.
On video conference calls from home, Alison is sometimes interrupted by the family cat. The cat has no legal training whatsoever, but, as a Siamese, she does like to voice her opinion.
Alison will also always be a music geek at heart – a fact cemented when she met Bono at Island Records during her music industry studies and which means that her perfect weekend away from work (not that she has many…) is at an outdoor music festival with her family and friends.
Gemma Cullis
Gemma chose to specialise in intellectual property because she is incurably curious and never grows tired of learning about clients’ businesses, products, and services.
After qualifying as a solicitor in 2000, Gemma spent nine years working for law firms in London specialising in IP with a particular interest in design rights and trade marks and working for clients in a range of sectors, from fashion, through tableware, to mechanics' tools. Having managed global IP portfolios for household names, Gemma helps influencers and start up organisations to develop and protect their brands. She represented designers at an international level in a dispute with a household-name film franchise owner and a well-known sunglasses brand in a registered design infringement dispute which spanned jurisdictions and went all the way to the top tier courts.
Gemma did not necessarily intend to collect all of the strings to her legal bow, but opportunities offered themselves. Gemma was working as an outsourced professional support lawyer when the Advertising Standards Authority conducted its major overhaul of the CAP Codes, which provide the framework for marketing regulation. Some of Gemma’s clients had committed to write a book about the new Codes for a leading legal publisher, but an influx of work made their deadlines unworkable. They outsourced the writing to Gemma, who wove Advertising Law into her career.
Another serendipity was working at British Gas (which sponsored the British Swimming team) in the Olympic year, walking the tightrope between maximising the sponsorship benefit without falling foul of the Olympic sponsorship regulations as British Gas was not an official Olympic sponsor.
Gemma believes that you learn the law whilst working in law firms but you need to go in-house to learn how to be a lawyer. She spent a number of years at Sky, British Gas and Centrica and now applies the art of in-house thinking to her clients. She loves to get under the skin of new clients, understanding their values, appetite for risk, and commercial drivers to provide impactful legal support.
Outside the office, Gemma's young family keeps her busy and mean that (for now at least), she's going to have to make do with camping trips and regular episodes of The Octonauts instead of diving trips to the Red Sea. She swims outdoors all year round, writes children's stories, plays the violin and always has a DIY project on the go.
On a personal note.
Gemma's dog, Frank. Has been known to wolf down a whole roast dinner (from the table) while no-one is looking.
Frank does not contribute anything useful to the legal profession.