Eleanor Velden

Eleanor founded Velden & Marsh with Samuel Marsh in 2014, after eight years in the corporate team of a Bristol firm where most clients were far larger than the companies she now prefers to act for. She runs the commercial contracts practice: supplier and customer agreements, terms of business, shareholder agreements and the sale or purchase of small companies. She reads a contract the way a judge would read it after something has gone wrong, and rewrites the clauses that would matter on that day, not the ones that merely look untidy. Before you spend money on a negotiation, she tells you in writing which points are worth a fight with the other side and which are not. As managing partner she sets the firm’s fixed fees and reviews every engagement letter before it is sent. Outside work she is a trustee of a housing charity in Bath.