Principals
Simon Bray
Simon Bray has a wealth of management experience within the legal profession, both as a consultant and as a senior manager. From a background of sales and marketing within the legal publishing industry, Simon moved into consultancy in the mid-1980s, providing law firms with advice on marketing and business development. Simon later advised over 40 law firms in successful bids for Franchise accreditation as well as supporting Investors in People and ISO 9000 projects.
He was also employed as Operations Director at Nelsons, one of the largest firms in the East Midlands, during a period of rapid and substantial growth. Simon was responsible for overall management of the firm's IT, Quality and Facilities departments, and held specific responsibility for day -to-day management of one of the firm's principal offices.
Simon has also acted as Chambers Director for a leading Temple-based set of chambers, and is currently retained for two days per week to provide compliance and risk management support for Gosschalks, a leading Humberside practice.
Mike Chard
Michael Chard is a retired solicitor with 42 years' experience in the Legal Profession. He is a specialist in property, insurance and professional indemnity insurance.
Mike has been the Managing Partner of a substantial law firm and also the head of large Property, Private Client and Litigation departments. On his retirement from the legal profession, he became Chairman of a leading insurance broker specialising in professional indemnity insurance for accountants, architects, solicitors and surveyors, and Chairman of a leading training company.
Mike is now the Managing Director of Web4Law. As well as advising on general regulatory matters, he is also a Lexcel consultant. He specialises in advising on acquisitions and mergers.
Matthew Moore LL.B, MCIPD, CDipAF, Solicitor
Matthew Moore LL.B MCIPD CDipAF is a director of Web4Law. He is also a consultant solicitor with the regulatory specialists Jayne Willetts & Co and a former law teacher. He joined the then M5 group (later NRM5) as its first employee in 1985 and oversaw the period of the group’s most dramatic growth with responsibilities that included training, recruitment and marketing. Since leaving the group in 1989 he has operated as a management consultant and trainer for a wide variety of firms and legal organisations, at various stages also holding the posts of Head of Management Training at Central Law Training and Quality Manager at Pannone. Internationally he has advised the Singapore Law Society on the development of its quality standard and the Law Society of New South Wales on its first adaptation of ISO 9001 to legal practice.
His publications include the Ark reports Compliance for Law Firms, Money Laundering Compliance for Law Firms (with Diane Price) and The Conveyancer’s Guide to Money Laundering and Mortgage Fraud. He has written and edited the last four editions of the popular Lexcel Office Procedures Manual (Law Society Publishing) – the standard template manual for law firms’ office and risk manuals. He has also produced through Web4Law a practical guide to the responsibilities of reporting officers – The Web4Law Money Laundering Reporting Officer Compliance Manual. Earlier titles included ‘The Law and Procedure of Meetings’ (Sweet & Maxwell, 1979) and ‘Quality Management for Law Firms' (Law Society Publishing, 2001).
His particular specialism is risk, quality and professional compliance issues, including the planning of and training in anti-money laundering programmes. From 1999 to 2007 he was the principal trainer for the Law Society in its Lexcel scheme and is the author of the Commercial Risk and Quality Standard (CRQS) - a programme which converts and combines generic management standards such as ISO 9001 (quality management) 14001 (environmental) and 27001 (information security) to commercial legal practice. He can be contacted at matt@web4law.co.uk.
