Durham has over 40 years experience as a globally focused, transactional and advisory lawyer with a passion for helping clients to make the most of their intellectual property, their innovative and inventive ideas (particularly in the field of cutting-edge technologies and communications) and generally to engage in intelligent, effective business decisions and projects.
He has unrestricted practising rights in UK, Australia and New Zealand. His passion and substantial expertise is in national and global transactions. His working life has been spent working with and within the public and private sectors and his expertise has been drawn progressively from advisory, transactional and operational legal issues as in-house or external lawyer counsel.
His clients recognise him as a well-regarded, highly effective advisory and transactional lawyer, who helps them achieve their organisational outcomes on national and international projects, usually involving intellectual property, telecoms, multimedia, or information technology law issues, and related commercial law issues.
Experience
Examples of experience include advising:
- Severn Trent plc - successful project and team leader for a global group-wide IP Audit and IP valuation of Severn Trent plc group assets
- Department of Defence (Australia) - as Regional Defence Client Manager for the Australian Government Solicitor's Office - providing external coordinated legal support for the multi-million dollar annual Naval Logistics and Support Organisation and Army-Training Command including Major Equipment Acquisition and all Tier 1 an 2 Outsourcing Program contracts; and negotiating and drafting software licenses and IP management rights relating to: a. AIR Simulator 5402 Project b. WEDGTAIL Project (early warning and control capability) c. BAE simulator software licence
- Westpac Banking Corporation - as Y2K Project Legal Counsel - delivering the legal support services for the banks global Y2K readiness project
- Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) - Lead negotiation and drafting of first long-term logistic support contract with global tech company for the entire ATOC company rolling stock operations in UK
- UKIPO - as a continuing IP Audit panel IP specialist undertaking multiple UK company IP Audits and separately providing follow-on corporate IP asset and management decision-making and management based on IP Audit report findings.
"We previously instructed Durham as leader of a team for our so far largest and most significant IP project. During the project, Durham has shown that he is a hard worker with a conscientious approach to the task in hand. He has managed a large amount of information and produced concise with a clear description of the legal background, easily understood by those who are not IP specialists. Durham's approachable style was immediately obvious to us and was one of the factors for his (and therefore his firm's) selection. He showed very good interpersonal skills and has managed to win over even the more reluctant participants. Furthermore, Durham has managed to successfully coordinate and manage on our behalf the input of non-legal professionals on the project. Durham's approach, put simply, has been people-orientated, commercial and focused - in fact, first-rate, throughout"
Alex, Senior Group Corporate Counsel, Severn Trent plc
"Durham is superb. He blends knowledge of law with the experience of life and a healthy dose of pragmatism. He has allowed us to secure our IP across the globe in a cost-effective manner and has found workable solutions when local rules have been difficult. In addition to this, he has brought much more security to our business, training the team on contracts, updating our general T&Cs and creating a number of agreements for use which whilst looking to protect us are balanced and fair to both sides which was hugely important to us. Whilst he is not an employee, he is very much part of our business, family and culture. I hope that you take the opportunity to benefit from this talents"
Greg, Managing Director at Rock Oil (in respect of a working relationship since 2016)
“Durham Grigg has been an excellent addition to the team; his professional approach, attention to detail, swiftness of response and good humour is very much appreciated, and I hope that there will be an opportunity for him to continue to work on international matters going forward.”
Representative cross-section of Manchester Metropolitan University clients (while engaged as in-house specialist IP & Commercial legal counsel)
“I have worked with Legal Services across a number of important projects. [VJ] leaving this team was a concern, as for a number of years she provided exceptional support and knowledge relating to international activities. However, I have found Durham Grigg to be equally capable and perhaps even more helpful (the turnaround times he has provided have gone above and beyond the norm), in addition, his ability to explain complex information and also find solutions outside of the box have been very much appreciated. I (and others in my team) now consider him to be a real asset the University's legal services”
Representative cross-section of Manchester Metropolitan University clients (while engaged as in-house specialist IP & Commercial legal counsel)
“Durham Grigg has been exceptionally helpful in sorting out some international contracts. He always uses a bullet-formatted e-mail, so one can see what points need to be addressed, rather than it appearing in a long text. He managed to overcome some technical communication issues related to institutes in different countries not having the same communication packages. He also went the extra mile often suggesting text to send to international partners during the period the contracts were developed"
Representative cross-section of Manchester Metropolitan University clients (while engaged as in-house specialist IP & Commercial legal counsel)
