Creating opportunities for What Comes Next: promotions 2025 spotlight

Richard Collie

Partner in TLT's competition team

What is your practice area?

My main focus is on competition and consumer protection law. The two areas compliment each other nicely as they are both ultimately forms of economic regulation, enforced by the Competition Markets Authority (CMA), designed to make sure markets are working well for consumers.

I’ve always had that dual focus, but the recently enacted Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers (DMCC) Act tied the two disciplines together and ‘upgraded’ the CMA’s enforcement powers for UK consumer law, bringing them in line with competition law for the first time. So, it’s an exciting time to specialise in this area. 

The DMCC Act also introduced a new regime regulating big tech firms with Strategic Market Status (SMS) and this will have a huge impact not just on SMS firms, but the many UK businesses that interact with them in this new regulatory environment. The new regime isn't yet fully operational; it won't be until the CMA has formally designated the first SMS firms and published conduct requirements. But we've been working with clients to understand the potential implications of these changes, including supporting on stakeholder responses to the first wave of SMS designation investigations in relation to Google's digital advertising activities. 

On the digital regulatory side, our tech clients are also affected by the EU Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act, both of which overlap to an extent with the UK's DMCC Act, so a big part of what I do is helping clients understand and navigate the "delta" between the UK and EU regimes. It's a rapidly evolving landscape, but thanks to our in-depth knowledge of this arena, we’re able to provide valuable insights to clients to help them prepare for challenges and opportunities ahead.

When did you join TLT?

I did a vac scheme at TLT in the summer of 2013 and after being offered a training contract, I joined as a paralegal in the Regulatory team while studying for my LPC part time before starting my training contract in 2015. 

I qualified in September 2017 and since then, have been given many opportunities allowing me to develop my skills and move up the ranks. I've had incredible support and exposure to interesting, challenging work throughout my career at TLT, which is a testament to the firm’s dedication to its people and ensuring progression at all levels. I think it's really important for NQs qualifying here to know that this is a place where you can progress all the way from trainee to partner if you want to.

What do you enjoy most about working at TLT?

I'll try and resist the urge to give them obvious answer (the people), even though it's true! 

For me, the main thing that drives my enthusiasm at TLT is the fact that we're investing so heavily in FutureLaw and trying to find new and innovative ways of delivering legal services. I love working with our FutureLaw team, who have that startup mentality of "let's give it a try". We've had some great successes working together, for example our award-winning virtual dawn raid simulation, which was great fun developing. This wouldn't happen if there wasn't a genuine top-down commitment to embodying our "what comes next" values. I really enjoy working alongside people who have a curious mindset and who are up for exploring the art of the possible - and thankfully there is no shortage of those people at TLT! 

There is also excellent flexibility and support at TLT for those of us with young families, which is pretty critical for me with two boys aged 3 and 6. 

What key experiences and milestones led to your promotion to partner?

It's hard to pinpoint specific milestones, but I think each CMA investigation I've worked on has helped me broaden my skillset and develop my experience of working on complex and, at times, high-profile cases. The first case I worked on almost immediately after qualification was the CMA's comparethemarket.com case - a huge case that was (and still is) cited globally. It lasted over four years, and resulted in us helping the client successfully overturn a £17.9million penalty in the Competition Appeal Tribunal. By the time the case was over I felt like there wasn't much left I hadn't seen! 

In addition to working on various other Competition Act investigations, I've also worked on some big CMA consumer law cases, including the CMA's inaugural greenwashing investigation in retail fashion and the package travel investigation that was launched during the height of the Covid pandemic. Looking back, those cases feel significant going into the new DMCC Act enforcement era as they helped cement my experience as a genuine competition and consumer law dualist. 

On the soft skills side of things, early on in my career I had a stint as interim Head of Legal for a client to provide parental leave cover and also managed a virtual secondment covering another full-time legal counsel position. That forced me to master the art of delegation at an early stage - which anyone will tell you is crucial if you want to scale up and progress in your legal career. 

Looking ahead what themes do you see emerging in the sector that you’re most looking forward to work on?

I'm really interested to see how the UK's new consumer law regime unfolds under the DMCC Act. The CMA now (as of 6 April) has the power to impose penalties up to 10% of global turnover on businesses that breach consumer law. Will we see them use those powers to their fullest extent, and who will they target?

More generally, 5 years after Brexit, we are starting to see increasingly meaningful levels of regulatory divergence in my practice area across consumer, competition and digital regulation. It will be interesting to see how much that 'gap' continues to widen.  For the first time in my career, we're also seeing geopolitical tensions have a genuine impact, particularly in relation to tech regulation - with the US pushing the UK and the EU to soften their respective approaches to regulating digital markets. Whether this will all be a flash in the pan, or lead to a longer-term shift, remains to be seen.

In the UK, we've also seen the government bear down on the CMA recently with its "strategic steer" - the overriding message being that the CMA hasn't been sufficiently focused on economic growth. We've already seen this play out in some of the CMA's recent merger control decisions and a softening of its approach around its DMCC Act guidance on unfair commercial practices. This has raised hopes that we'll see a CMA that is more engaged with the business community and open to constructive dialogue. But again, it's very much a case of watch this space!