Alison Matthews

Alison Matthews is Director of Quality and Risk/MLRO at Shoosmiths LLP. She is renowned as one of the country's leading experts in professional conduct, money laundering and data protection. She has won 19 awards, 17 of which are as the UK's Anti Money Laundering (AML) Adviser of the Year 2014, 2015 and 2016. She has been advising on anti money laundering issues since 1994.

She worked in Professional Ethics (SRA) for 12 years mostly as the Guidance Executive, Investment Business before joining private practice at a top 20 national law firm, where she worked for almost 11 years. She set up her own training/compliance consultancy, Alison Matthews Consulting Ltd in 2012.

As a member of (and latterly Chair) the Law Society's Money Laundering Taskforce between 2000 and 2012, she was heavily involved in lobbying on the 2nd and 3rd Money Laundering Directives. She has followed the 4th Directive very closely and is a regular speaker on the Directive.

Alison lectures for all the UK law societies, local law societies and the Isle of Man Law Society and in-house. She wrote the Law Society of Jersey's Code of Conduct and Accounts Rules. She was commissioned to write the AML Toolkit and the Data Protection Toolkit, published by the Law Society and is a regular contributor to legal journals. She is on the Editorial Board of the Law Society of England and Wales' Legal Compliance Bulletin.

She is well regarded in the higher echelons of the legal profession and in government circles.