Steve Barnett > Shoosmiths LLP > London, England > Lawyer Profile

Led from Birmingham by the ‘excellent’ Alastair Peet but operating very much as a unified national practice with other key resources in Reading and London, Shoosmiths LLP provides ‘sensible, actionable and practical advice’ to an increasingly balanced mix of investors and investees. Peet remains a popular choice among prominent fund clients, including Octopus Ventures, which benefit from his ‘very collaborative and consensual approach’ to transactional work as well as his intimate knowledge of the underlying documentation, having himself played a key role drafting and updating the model documents for the BVCA. Along with the ‘knowledgeable and commercial’ Alastair Hammerton, who heads the Midlands corporate team, Peet has also been at the forefront of utilising document automation, AI review, and data analytics to deliver efficiencies and insights for clients. In London, the ‘very knowledgeable’ Steve Barnett is ‘well connected in the venture capital market in Europe’, providing ‘very practical’ advice to his core company side roster, as well as a growing number of institutional investors on early stage funding. Other key members of the national team include Thames Valley-based corporate partner Sanjeev Sharma, whose work encompasses a significant amount of venture capital mandates; Reading-based tax partner Tom Wilde, who is a key resource on the crucial tax aspects associated with the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) and Venture Capital Trusts (VCT); and the ‘excellent’ Helen Burnell, who leads the firm’s spHERe initiative to support female founders and venture capitalists. All named practitioners are based in Birmingham, unless otherwise noted.