Matt Church

Matt Church is Carbon Law Partners’ Group Commercial Director, supporting commercial legal strategy and working closely with our lawyers, Partners and clients to shape the way legal services are delivered across the firm.

Matt brings more than 20 years’ experience in senior leadership roles within professional sport, including a near 5 year stint as CEO of Neath RFC. His background gives him a strong understanding of the commercial, strategic, operational and reputational pressures faced by a wide array of organisations.

At Carbon, Matt uses his experience to help clients access the right legal support at the right time. He works with our Partners to ensure matters are properly scoped, commercially focused and handled in a way that reflects the client’s wider priorities, not just the legal issue in isolation.

His experience is particularly valuable where organisations are managing complex stakeholder relationships, urgent decisions, commercial partnerships, governance issues or reputational risk. Matt understands the pace at which these environments operate and helps ensure Carbon’s support is practical, responsive and joined up.

Describe your role and general skill set…

I head up Business Development and Marketing at Carbon Law Partners, supporting the firm with commercial strategy, client relationships and practice growth. My background is in commercial sales, strategy and leadership, mainly within professional sport.

What do you enjoy about your job?

Describe Carbon in a maximum of three words:

Commercial. Supportive. Ambitious.

Where do you envisage the firm in 5 years’ time?

Five years is a long time in any business, not least this one given the exciting phase of growth and development we are currently enjoying. I’d like to see Carbon continue to grow in headcount and reputation, becoming known for specialist legal expertise while protecting the culture and qualities that make the firm different.

What was your first job, and what did you learn from it?

My first job was in my stepfather’s antique and house clearance business. It taught me how to negotiate, sell and, most importantly, deal with people from all walks of life.

How do you unwind outside of work?

I like charity work and training for charity challenges. Having something in the diary to aim for gives me purpose, structure and motivation.

Outside of this, I love spending time with my wonderful wife and young daughters experiencing whatever new things we can together.

Where is your favourite place to visit?

I really love Thailand, especially arriving with no real plan and going with the flow – often we only book the first two night’s accommodation and then move to wherever the journey takes us. It’s a beautiful country with wonderful people.

If you could gain a new skill or superpower, what would you choose?

I’d love to be able to time travel, more specifically go back in time – it fascinates me how feats of engineering or simply getting through daily life was accomplished. Also being able to find out what is fact and what is fiction in major historic events.

Tell us an interesting or little-known fact about yourself:

I am a volunteer member of the Penarth Lifeboat crew and have been since 2010. My brother is also a crew member in West Wales, so it is a bit of a family affair.