Speakers

Speaker profile

Paul Hardy has over 25 years’ experience working as a lawyer and policy adviser, including practising as a barrister, working in the European Commission in Brussels and as a senior civil servant in the UK Houses of Parliament.

Paul joined DLA Piper from the House of Lords in April 2017, after eight years as the senior EU legal adviser to the UK Parliament. He focusses on international trade and UK government affairs.

Paul advises businesses, public sector organisations and States on the commercial implications of the UK’s new free trade agreements post-Brexit, customs, and Word Trade Organisation rules. His professional background makes him well placed to navigate clients through the complexities of the UK’s new cross-border regulatory environment, and to understand the new opportunities and risks that will arise. DLA Piper UK LLP is a member of the UK Department for International Trade’s (DIT) Trade Law Panel. Paul leads the firm’s relationship with DIT under that panel and on bidding for the tender opportunities that arise.

In April 2020, Paul took over as UK Head of Government Affairs from Lord Clement-Jones CBE. The UK practice provides clients with strategic policy advice and engagement strategies for achieving outcomes in Whitehall and Westminster. It combines its political and parliamentary know-how with the legal and regulatory expertise of an all-sector law firm to help clients achieve a desired result. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the legal basis for a policy can be a crucial ingredient in considering how to influence it. The UK government affairs team is part of an inter-connected global government affairs offering within DLA Piper, with centres in Brussels and Washington DC, working across borders in interdisciplinary teams.

Paul holds the qualification of practicing barrister, and also remains a “door tenant” at specialist EU and administrative law barristers’ chambers in London, Francis Taylor Building, where he last practiced as a self-employed member of the Bar.