Matt Skipper

Head of New Business

About

With nearly 20 years of professional services business development experience, I help businesses, organisations and individuals find the right lawyer for their needs.

If you are looking to scale up, exit or find investment, protect your intellectual property, deal with a crisis, build resilience or have a complex personal legal issue that you need advice on, I can support you with finding the right person at Mills & Reeve to start a conversation with.

I also support the development of young professionals and students so present on personal brand and networking skills both internally and to a range of NextGen and business networks. I’m passionate about giving confidence to those at the very start of their career and others looking to step up to the next level.

Organisation

Content

Cybersecurity and NIS 2 – what does this mean for you?

Directive (EU) 2022/2555 on measures for a high common level of cybersecurity across the Union (NIS 2) came into force on 16 January 2023. By 17 October 2024, Member States must adopt and publicise measures to comply with the Directive. NIS 2 will apply to a broad range of businesses which provide their services, or carry out their activities in the EU even if they are not based in a Member State. So what does this mean for you?

Open-source software – issues we see cropping up in practice

Open-source software (OSS) is software that is free to redistribute, with the source code being distributed as well as the object code. It is widely acknowledged using OSS components in software development can help reduce time and effort being expended recreating functionality that already exists. Consequently, it can speed up innovation.

Strengthening the UK clinical research environment

A recent ABPI report highlighted a decline in UK clinical trials. Improving the UK ecosystem for clinical research will involve a range of measures, and we look forward to publication of the O’Shaughnessy review. This sits alongside an ongoing substantial upgrade to UK clinical trials legislation and guidance, that forms the focus of this article.

Oxpansion…

Carter Jonas previously reported that investment in laboratory and office space in Oxford for 2022 was on track to break the previous record of £330 million set in 2021 and that prices for fitted lab space now exceed £100 per sq ft. With demand for space from life science organisations reaching nearly 860,000 sq ft in Oxfordshire alone, chronic undersupply continues to pose all too familiar problems. So, how exactly are players in the life sciences sector continuing to play a crucial role in facilitating expansion of the Oxford eco-system?