Our team
Bill Cogan
Founding Partner
Bill is a dual-qualified lawyer, as a Solicitor of England & Wales and an Attorney-at-Law for the State of New York, the latter after completing a masters degree from the University of California, Berkeley.
Before founding Seven Legal, Bill had over 10 years of experience working with the Royal Bank of Scotland, PetroSaudi International (Legal Counsel), Ignition Law (Partner) and Invictus Strategy Associates (Partner).
He founded Seven Legal with the mission of providing commercially focused legal advice for high growth technology companies.
Ryan Thorne
Senior Consultant
Ryan Thorne has over 15 years of legal experience in private equity, negotiated mergers and acquisitions transactions, joint ventures, restructurings, public M&A and general corporate advisory. He currently consults for Seven Legal as well as private clients including BlackRock's Financial Markets Advisory (FMA) Group in London.
In Australia, he worked as a Senior Lawyer in Woolworths Portfolio Group and was Woolworths Group Counsel for their Home Improvement Exit (including their disposal of the Masters Timber & Hardware business).
Vivek N. Boray
Attorney-at-law
With over 15 years’ experience as a startup lawyer, advisor, and mentor to early-stage startup founders in Silicon Valley, New York, and across the world, Vivek joins Seven Legal to lead their US Corporate practice.
Qualified to practice in California and New York, Vivek started his career in Silicon Valley with Wilson Sonsini. After working with several leading global firms, he launched his own practice in New York and Silicon Valley, later opening a Bangalore office for US/India boutique firm.
He was recently General Counsel of Locus, a state-of-the-art delivery automation platform using advanced algorithms to automate logistics. Vivek also serves as General Counsel to a Latin American-based investment fund focused on secondary investments in Emerging Markets.
Brian Fonville
Senior Consultant
Brian earned his J.D. from Stanford, as well as a Master's Degree in Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies. He has worked as a transactional lawyer in corporate and financial matters in New York City, North Carolina, and in Prague.
He has also worked for the CEELI Institute in Prague and held internships with the EBRD, OECD, Earthjustice, and the Office of Czech President Vaclav Havel. Brian is fluent in Czech, French, and Slovak, and has significant experience with cross-border commercial transactions, software licenses, and investment funds.
Brian is in private practice in Prague and is a member of the bar in New York State, the Czech Republic, and England & Wales.
Vicky Grobbelaar
Senior Consultant
Vicky started her legal career in Johannesburg South Africa and has been in private practice and owner of her own legal services company with clients ranging from start-ups to global household names.
Vicky has been providing expert legal advice in the Technology and IT sector for over 20 years across continents and is in touch with the realities of business in a connected world and digital age.
She is a fan of Apple and can’t live without her Apple devices. She admires that Apple as a company has always managed to make cutting edge tech accessible to the guy on the street as it aligns with her own mission to make specialist law accessible to all businesses.
Mattan Lass
Senior Consultant
Mattan Lass is a highly entrepreneurial legal and policy strategist. Fully qualified in three jurisdictions – Ireland, Israel and England – he established Ireland's first and only dedicated legal “Israel Desk”, helping Israeli companies grow and invest in Ireland.
Mattan works as a Senior Consultant with Seven Legal, advising the firm's highly innovative clients on specialist technology and corporate law matters.
Eran Goren
Senior Consultant
Eran is a qualified lawyer (LL.B., LL.M.) and certified data protection officer, with experience of more than a decade as a commercial business-oriented attorney. He has assisted in local and international transactions in the renewables industry and in other fields.
Eran’s favourite app is LinkedIn. As an admirer of renewable energy and cleantech, he finds it a great tool to stay updated on new technologies and find out the latest news on how different countries are doing in terms of hitting targets such as Paris 2030 and NET ZETO 2050. He also finds it a good way to keep in touch with other professionals in the field.
Selman Yalvaç
Legal Consultant
Selman is a qualified lawyer in Turkey and a PhD Candidate in Commercial Law. He also completed his LL.M. degree in International Commercial Law in Dublin as European Union Jean Monnet Scholar.
Following his prior experiences in Ankara, Dublin and London, Selman is currently in private practice in Turkey and also works as a Legal Consultant with Seven Legal.
He is a business-minded corporate lawyer with an experience in different jurisdictions. Selman brings a talent for cross-border commercial transactions. His priority is understanding your business to produce the best solutions.
Vicki Field
Senior HR Consultant
Vicki has over 20 years of experience in senior HR positions. Starting her career with Vodafone on their inaugural HR graduate training programme, she progressed rapidly to a position supporting an IT division and finished her time there by setting up the HR helpdesk for 11,000 employees.
Vicki moved to Accenture in an in-house HR role, before joining PruHealth as the 6th employee pre-launch of the new company. PruHealth has now rebranded to Vitality Health and Life, and Vicki’s role as Head of People encompassed everything to do with HR moving from a start-up to one of the largest insurers in the UK.
Kellie Simpson
VP Customer Success & Insight
Kellie works with Seven Legal as VP Customer Success, supporting Bill and the team with daily activities to ensure the business runs smoothly.
Leading on much of the organisation and relationships side of Seven Legal, Kellie assists with on-boarding, client liaison, preparing monthly financial reports, looking after consultants, organising webinars, helping with email campaigns and business development activities and general legal support work.
Kellie loves Apple and the way they have made their products so instantly recognisable and sought-after. She has a Mac, Macbook, two iPads, and iPhone and an Apple Watch – so is always connected wherever she is!
Edward Allbless
Senior Consultant
Edward is an English qualified solicitor, with over 32 years’ tier-1 professional experience. He has held senior roles in three major law firms, including Dentons and CMS, both at London and overseas office level. He has also held in-house roles in industry, most recently as General Counsel and Board Secretary to Oman Oil (E&P) LLC, a major energy sector operator for whom he had advised on numerous multi-billion dollar transactions.
Edward’s practice focus has included general corporate representation and new company incorporation, acquisitions and divestment, joint ventures and joint operations, project and debt finance, project development, and dispute resolution. He has acted for clients ranging in size from SME to FTSE 100 corporations. Edward has a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree from the University of Oxford.
Jeremy Charles Espley
Senior Consultant
Jeremy is an English qualified Solicitor with over 25 years’ experience specialising in M&A, cross jurisdictional transactions, asset-backed finance for startups, TMT, IT outsourcing and Recruitment.
A Cambridge University graduate, Jeremy began his career at Fox Williams, going on to advise Logica PLC on numerous acquisitions across 44 jurisdictions; Gulftainer, a leading port operator in the UAE, on acquisitions in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Brazil and Russia; and has consulted for some of the UK’s leading technology companies, including Vodafone and BT.
Jeremy has also acted as General Counsel to US owned hospitality technology provider, Guestline and currently acts as GC to two MNCs headquartered in the UK and India.
Emma Wayland
Senior Consultant
With 20 years' experience as an employment lawyer, Emma advises companies from startups to multinationals with a particular focus on the Tech and financial services sectors and private equity clients.
Emma regularly advises on employment aspects of corporate transactions and provides day-to-day advice on all employment law issues from employment contracts to redundancies.
Emma spent several years in-house, primarily in tech companies such as PayPal and Cloudflare and has worked with a number of international law firms including Mayer Brown and Taylor Wessing.
Emma loves the apple health app: “it reminds me when to put my phone down and go to sleep as well as keeping me honest with how many steps I have done in a day (never enough)!"
Saman Harris
Senior Consultant
Saman is a senior commercial tech GC with expertise in helping tech companies and Fintechs safely navigate complex legal and commercial issues during periods of rapid international expansion.
Saman has a strong background developing and leading legal teams in high-growth tech companies; his experience spans regulatory, commercial, product, employment, finance and corporate work.
He has top-tier private practice training along with a proven track record of succeeding in the fast-paced world of high-growth tech companies - helping to enable businesses to scale whilst managing commercial and legal risks appropriately.
Mo Abbas
IP & Trade Mark Consultant
Mo is our Trade Mark and Design Rights expert and supports businesses with their overall trade mark strategy, both in the UK and globally by carrying out IP audits and advising on how best to approach and manage their trade mark portfolios.
Mo advises on all matters relating to trade marking, including general advice, global registration, maintenance and enforcement. Furthermore, he has assisted many businesses in claiming their social media handles across major social media outlets such as TikTok and Instagram.
Mo's speciality is working with Startups, SMEs and Entrepreneurs to get their brand protected and set it up for world domination and particularly enjoys the educational side of making clients aware of their rights and the pitfalls of a complex area of law, which business owners often underestimate when taking a DIY approach.
