Our Team

Handley Gill’s team is led by our Founder, CEO and Principal Consultant, Nicola Cain.

Nicola read law at undergraduate and post-graduate level before completing the Bar Vocational Course. During her undergraduate degree, she spent time on placement in industry, including six months at Matrix Chambers specialising in human rights.

Having trained and qualified as a barrister at 5RB, the specialist London media and communications law set, where she gained expertise in privacy, information rights including data protection, and defamation law, Nicola joined the British Broadcasting Corporation. There she advised programme makers, commercial teams and the board on a diverse range of issues, representing the BBC in hearings from the First-tier Tribunal (Information Rights) up to the UK’s House of Lords and Supreme Court. Nicola was ultimately promoted to Head of Legal and secured her IAPP CIPP/E certification before being headhunted to join an international law firm based in the City of London. Nicola was promptly promoted to equity partner and practised media (defamation and misuse of private information), data protection and freedom of information and related human rights law, advising and representing claimants and defendants from individuals to global media organisations and ‘Big Tech’ on both non-contentious and contentious issues. Nicola also led the firm’s thought leadership on emerging legislative proposals on online harms and online safety.

Nicola founded Handley Gill in 2020, where we provide counsel to private and public sector organisations in the UK, EEA and across the globe on data protection and GDPR/UK GDPR compliance, responsible development and deployment of artificial intelligence (AI), content moderation, trust and online safety, and human rights and environmental, social and governance (ESG) compliance.

Nicola is a published author, having acted as the Assistant Editor of the practitioners’ text ‘Human Rights Practice’ for over a decade as well as being a contributing author, and co-authored the fourth edition of ‘Defamation: Law, Procedure and Practice’. She is regularly invited to speak at conferences and events and to write articles on Handley Gill’s areas of specialism and has contributed to media publications.