Squire Patton Boggs has appointed Georgie Messent as a partner in its Environmental, Safety and Health Practice Group in London.
Ms. Messent is an environmental and sustainability lawyer, with 25 years of specialist experience advising clients across a range of sectors on environmental regulatory issues, including chemical and carbon regulation, as well as corporate and property transactions. She’s led the legally qualified ESG regulatory and corporate governance advice at PwC for the last three and a half years, where she was Director and Head of Environmental and Sustainability.
Ms. Messent is ranked in Legal 500 as a leader in her field and is described as being “able to convert the intricacies of environmental law into practical advice”. She is also co-author of Sweet & Maxwell’s first edition text entitled Property Transactions: Planning and Environment.
“We’re very pleased to welcome Georgie to the firm,” said Peter S. Gould, global leader of the Environmental, Safety and Health (ESH) Practice Group. “With environmental and ESG issues high on the corporate agenda, clients are seeking guidance from us on this new, fast-growing and multi-jurisdictional legal framework. This is a highly technical and complex sphere of law and in Georgie we have an outstanding practitioner who will work with clients on their large, multi-jurisdictional ESG transformation projects, their compliance with environmental and sustainability regulation, and their ESG corporate reporting.”
Partner Rob Elvin, who leads the ESH practice in the UK and Europe, added, “It’s great to have this investment in the ESG team in London. Georgie has an impressive breadth of knowledge and experience of environmental law, covering issues such as REACH, waste management, contaminated land, water pollution, carbon management and trading, environmental risk management on transactions and environmental litigation.”
“In particular, Georgie’s extensive expertise in ESG reporting and extended producer responsibility (EPR) regulations for products across Europe and the UK will enable Georgie to work with our UK and EU ESG group to further develop our broader ESG services. She will work closely with our European ESG lead in Frankfurt, Andreas Fillmann and our European Public Policy practice, particularly the team led by Thomas Delille - which has a strong EU-wide reputation in this space advising on the waste, packaging, plastics, ESG governance and sustainability regulations flowing from Brussels.”
Georgie Messent commented, “Squire Patton Boggs has emerged as a significant adviser to international businesses, not only in traditional areas of environmental law and chemicals regulation, but also in the fast-developing space of ESG reporting and the circular economy. The combination of our newly strengthened UK ESG legal credentials and our well-established European ESG practice (including the public policy experts) is tremendously exciting. I look forward to working with my new colleagues across the firm.”
Ms. Messent qualified as a solicitor in England and Wales in 1998. She’s been a solicitor-advocate since 2002 and a partner at various leading UK firms since 2005. In 2020 she joined PwC to set up the ESG Legal practice. At PwC, Ms. Messent led the team providing Environmental and Sustainability Legal Advice and was a member of its Global ESG Legal Team.