The appointment takes Constantine Law to a headcount of nine partners and 13 fee-earning staff, with an all-female team of four senior lawyers within the firm’s regulatory and investigations practice, the firm said in a statement.

O’Connor is joining from international firm, Bird & Bird, bringing with her over 20 years of experience advising senior professionals and corporates in relation to financial crime offences and risk management. She regularly advises those at senior management and director level.

Her focus is on leading internal investigations into regulatory breaches or alleged financial crime including fraud, bribery and corruption, facilitating tax evasion and money laundering offences.  She also guides businesses when reporting to regulators and during regulatory investigations. 

O’Connor advises international corporate clients, performing reviews, stress tests and developing AML, anti-bribery and corruption, modern slavery and fraud prevention programmes.  She supports compliance functions and MLRO’s, and also provides a triage service to businesses to assist with AML queries and reporting concerns.

She provides bespoke training to businesses in relation to financial crime topics and the preventative procedures that need to be in place to avoid regulatory breaches. The training also extends to preparing for the possibility of a dawn raid conducted by HMRC, SFO or the police.

O’Connor is joining a growing team of senior lawyers at Constantine Law, a firm set up by John Hayes in 2015, which recruited employment partner Suki Hayes last year, and regulatory and corporate crime partners Emma Vernon (consultant) and Jemma Sherwood-Roberts. In January 2021, the firm joined forces with Nick Hine and his specialist employment team from Hine Legal.

Welcoming her to the firm, managing partner John Hayes said: “At Constantine Law we have created a new type of law firm – one that is entrepreneurial and agile and works to a lean business model delivering a smarter, more responsive service to our clients. We are without the fixed costs of many firms which enables us to offer senior expert advice at extremely good value prices.”

"The fact that we now have an all-female regulatory team is a testament to the attractions of working for a collegiate firm like ours in these modern times and a testament to our business model," he added.