Milberg London

Group Actions, Commercial Litigation, Litigation Funding

Partner

Polly is one of the founding partners of Milberg London and a member of the senior management team. She is the firm's Anti-money laundering officer, deputy Compliance of Legal Practice, HR and Client Care partner, oversees various operational projects across the business as well as maintaining a busy case load.

Polly began her career training and qualifying at Paul Hastings (Europe) LLP in London where she got early exposure to high-profile commercial litigation but spent the majority of her time undertaking transactional work on commercial real estate debt securitisations, loan servicing, structured finance and restructuring deals. Although this was not a path that Polly ultimately pursued, she continues to harness and redeploy the transactional experience she gained in those early years. Having put deal documents together gives Polly a unique understanding of how to pick them apart in the context of a dispute. Not many litigators have worked on the documents from those two very different perspectives. Her ability to navigate through complex financial documents comes in particularly helpful when drafting and reviewing litigation funding agreements and complex settlements, something Milberg London do plenty of.

From Paul Hastings, Polly moved to the Finance and Banking disputes team in Mishcon de Reya’s leading litigation practice. Polly spent over 5 years in this team working on a broad range of commercial litigation disputes valued in the several thousands up to the several billions. It was here that Polly met co-founders James Oldnall, Edward Cardington and James Taylor and began building a claimant orientated disputes practice that increasingly had a consumer flavour. In particular, Polly spent several years successfully representing a number of small business owners in miss-selling claims against some of the UK’s biggest high street banks.

Polly now specialises in group claims against large institutional defendants and is part of the team at Milberg London acting on behalf of tens of thousands of motorists in various emissions claims. Polly also continues to work on general commercial disputes and investigations within the firm's commercial litigation practice.

Outside of the law, Polly is also a founding committee member for The AdAmi Project and served on the charity’s board of trustees for 5 years. The AdAmi Project supports young mothers in Sierra Leone.

Polly is recognised as a Next Generation Partner by The Legal 500 and an Up and Coming Partner by Chambers & Partners. She is a member of the Fraud Women’s Network.

In 2022, Polly was named as one of three finalists in the Solicitor of the Year category at The Inspiration Women in Law Awards. Polly was also a finalist for the Law Firm Leader of the Year (Small-to-Medium-Sized Practice) in the Women and Diversity in Law Awards 2023.

English

First Class MA Honours in History from The University of Edinburgh (2005 to 2009)

GDL, LPC (Distinction) and LLB (First) from The College of Law, Bloomsbury and Moorgate, (2009 to 2011)