Nigel Spencer is Professor of Education Innovation and Professional Practice at Queen Mary University of London. He has been working closely with the Law School since 2014 and, with Christina Perry and Valsamis Mitsilegas, co-created the School’s innovative Law in Practice programme with global law firm Reed Smith LLP. Nigel is also Director for Queen Mary's Hub for Professional Practice, which aims to impact the future of practice through research-informed life-long education, and works closely with the School’s Legal Advice Centre, and sits on its Advisory Board.

Following an early academic career leading international, inter-disciplinary research projects exploring cultural change, identity and group dynamics, Nigel worked in Professional Services Firms for 20 years, initially in a client-facing role at PricewaterhouseCoopers. For 13 years, he then held senior talent development roles at two international law firms.

In these law firms Nigel was Global Director of Learning and Development and was responsible for designing and implementing firm-wide talent development strategies. A qualified Executive Coach, one major focus for Nigel was associate and partner development and assessment, often embedding mentoring and coaching into programmes in order to create sustainable behaviour change.

Nigel worked with Senior and Managing Partners, and the Boards at these firms, creating a number of award-winning programmes for different phases of lawyer careers, focusing especially on experiential learning strategies:

• New undergraduate law degrees and graduate MBA programmes which embedded workplace experience.
• Associate / partner client relationship and leadership programmes.
• Career direction programmes for established equity partners.
• Senior partner transition and succession planning programmes.

During this time, Nigel also led organisational development initiatives as law firms responded to the disruption in their industry. These included creating the first ‘Innovation Hub’ in a global law firm as a client-facing collaboration space, helping the firm to evolve its future service delivery and working with the legal tech community to drive this initiative.

In addition, Nigel contributed at senior Committee and Board level over many years to projects which aimed to broaden access to the legal profession, and enhance inclusion, working with diverse groups including secondary schools and bodies such as the Prince’s Trust, PRIME, Aspiring Solicitors, the BLD Foundation, and the 30% Club. Nigel has spoken at conferences about broadening access strategies, both nationally and internationally.

In 2017, Nigel moved to Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, as a Senior Client Director in the Executive Education team (where he is still an Associate Fellow). At Oxford, Nigel contributed to executive leadership programmes and practitioner research projects, specialising in leadership development within the professional services sector. He created the School’s award-winning practitioner research series with Meridian West on how the strategic use of learning can create competitive advantage in professional services. In addition, Nigel led projects looking at the future of Executive Education and how the design of educational programmes leads to learning impact and behavioural change.

Nigel’s research focuses on a broad range of areas related to innovation in leadership development in the legal sector, and professional services more broadly, future models of education and lifelong learning:

• Evolving career paths and the future skill sets of lawyers, and those working in professional services more broadly.
• The impact of embedding coaching in leadership development programmes.
• Leadership and client relationship development in the legal sector.
• Uses of technology and ‘nudge’ learning methodologies to create behavioural change.
• ‘Laboratory’ learning methods in education, connecting learning programmes with the workplace.
• Future models of education, universities and lifelong learning.

More broadly, Nigel co-chaired the UK’s national body of Legal Education professionals (the Legal Education Training Group) for a number of years and now sits on its Advisory Panel. As Chair, he worked with international Business Schools to conduct research into coaching, leadership development and strategy. Nigel has also held Board roles at international Higher Education Research Institutes and at the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA). Nigel is also a member of Oxford University’s Saïd Business School Coaching Community, coaching on the Saïd Business School’s MBA and executive development programmes.