Simmons & Simmons has signed up former Olympus chief executive and whistleblower Michael Woodford as a non-executive director to sit on its board.

Woodford was named president and chief operating officer of Japanese camera and medical equipment manufacturer Olympus Corporation in April 2011, and was made CEO in October of the same year.

He was dismissed only two weeks later after he questioned payments worth over $1.5bn (£933.4m) and called for the resignation of the company's chairman and vice president. The deals were later admitted to be fraudulent.

Simmons represented Woodford when he took his case against Olympus to the UK Employment Tribunal in 2012. He received £10m in a settlement from the company.

Woodford takes up one of two non-executive positions on Simmons' board, replacing former Quintiles Transnational CEO Pamela Kirby after it emerged she had stepped down from the committee in September 2013. The other non-executive position is held by former PricewaterhouseCoopers managing partner Rodger Hughes.

Other members of the 12-strong board are: senior partner Colin Passmore, who chairs the committee; managing partner Jeremy Hoyland; finance partner Alyson Lockett; energy partner Patrick Wallace; Amsterdam-based corporate partner Leo Verhoeff; Hong Kong employment partner Fiona Loughrey; Germany disputes partner Peter Meyer; ICT partner Alex Brown; finance director David McLaughlin; and marketing & business development director David Staiano.

Meyer, Brown and Loughrey took up their board roles last year, alongside Verhoeff's reappointment to the board.