A team led by the Birmingham office of national firm Mills & Reeve has been re-appointed to the legal panel of Manchester Metropolitan University.
Led by partner Richard Sykes, the advisory team will provide legal advice to the university across a number of areas, including education, employment, commercial contracts, IT, intellectual property, procurement and construction law, as well as property and real estate work and academic agreements.
The firm already has a sizeable roster of higher education clients, including more than 90 universities and other colleges.
Locally, the institutions receiving advice from the firm include Aston, Wolverhampton and Birmingham, as well as others further afield including Cambridge, King’s College London and Oxford.
The firm has recently been appointed legal adviser to the University of Manchester, as well as the University of Nottingham and Nottingham Trent University.
MMU team leader Mr Sykes is a partner and barrister at Mills & Reeve’s Birmingham office, who specialises in education and public law.
He said: "We are proud to have been formally appointed to Manchester Metropolitan University’s panel.
"Our experience in delivering services to the higher education sector means we are fully aware of the funding pressures faced by universities and colleges. We are therefore committed to working with our clients to help them reduce their overall expenditure on legal services and to maximise the value for money they receive.
"We are very much looking forward to working with the University and its in-house legal team on future projects and continuing to build our relationship, which started in 2006. MMU positions itself as a university for world-class professionals and has shown itself to be a hugely popular place to study."
Manchester Metropolitan University was awarded university status in 1992 and is part of the largest higher education campus in the UK. It is the UK’s third most popular university, receiving more than 48,000 applications each year.
Sara Shanab, the head of legal at MMU, said: "I am really happy to be continuing the university’s relationship with Mills & Reeve and I and my colleagues look forward to working with the firm’s experienced, specialist lawyers."
