Nataliia

FEATURE

Nataliia

Ukranian lawyer living in the UK

Nataliia

“One morning at 6am on the 24th February, I woke up and read the news that the war had started. I was shocked and scared and couldn’t understand what was happening… I woke up my daughter and told her ‘darling, you are not going to school because it is war – the war has started and I don’t know what we need to do, but we need to pack our luggage’. I left on 6th of March with my nine-year-old daughter and my sister-in-law.

There was a huge queue at our border and a lot of people they went abroad. So 90% of these people, they were women with children who were trying to save the children… me and my daughter and sister in law went by car to Latvia.

My sister-in-law and my brother had just got married on 22 February, 2 days before the war, my brother is a soldier in the army now and he’s fighting for our country, my husband and my parents… I have very lovely family and all of them, they’re staying in Ukraine now”.

Nataliia recounts how the two women and her daughter stayed in Latvia for one and a half months, but how she was concerned that, not knowing the language, she would not find work there. So she determined to leave. She knew some English and her daughter had been learning English since the age of 4. ‘Language is power’ she states with a smile. Friends introduced her to an English solicitor in London who became her sponsor.

“She helped for us to make all documents. And we, on 23rd of April, came to London. Yes. And it is like another step in our life… like ‘okay, we are safe’. But for me it was… I need to find job because how can I live here with my family without job? I knew exactly that I would like to be attorney, maybe not barrister or solicitor, but I would like to be lawyer, to work in my profession… and really I wasn’t very confident in this. I only had this very big goal that I need to work here, I need to try to do my best”.

Nataliia learned to write a CV, work with Linked-in, and study ESOL at the adult education College.

She posted on Facebook that she was a lawyer from Ukraine to see if there were others like her. “After 24 hours, I had connection with 150 Ukrainians. And after two weeks there were 350 Ukrainian attorneys who live in the full country and who has the same situation as me”.

From there, she set up the ‘Ukrainian Attorney in the UK network’. Nataliia recounts with thanks the support extended to her and other Ukrainian legals by the UK Legal Profession: individual sponsors who helped to make job applications and introductions; a networking event organised by the Law Society focusing on employment opportunities; an organised excursion for a group of Ukrainian legals to visit the Supreme Court and speak with one of the High Court Justices. And no less support from the corporate sector, in the form of sponsorship from Shell for 200 Ukrainian lawyers to take Legal English on-line courses.

“When I came here people were giving support for Ukraine…I feel this strong support for Ukraine”. However, she pinpoints, “for employers it is hard to understand how a Ukrainian lawyer can work here…” Nataliia was given a six-month contract by Shell to work as a contract coordinator, “I didn’t know anything about oil and products but I knew exactly what I needed to do with contracts…how to draft one…my knowledge from Ukraine was all there. In Ukraine, I had external clients from another country, like a two-country partnership, but here, for me…it’s like the whole world has opened, because we have a lot of business with many countries. After 6 months, I understood that the work was not so different, if you could do it in the little companies in Ukraine you can do the same here, except it is more open… you have bigger information, so you need an open mind – and to be brave!”

I ask Nataliia to say a little more about the network she set up.

“So I’m very proud of this because, for me I know exactly that Ukrainian people, they’re very professional. Yes. And we are very hard working. Because in Ukraine, you need to run very quickly if you would like to own money, if you would like to have clients, you need to be clever.…I see it as my volunteer role now, to help professional people find work…I think every person who will find the work, it’s very big success. ‘Cos it’s one more family will have a home and will live without stress here… they will know that they can be calm for the next 3, 4, 5 or six months. Because we only live like from something to something, from some action to another…. And for me now, I feel when I started my work in July I was so happy ‘cos I was thinking, great, I have six months of stability. It’s so important now. When my contract was reviewed, I was thinking, oh my God, I’m so happy again, because now I have six months of stability again and my daughter, she has stability too”.

Sustaining the networking role on top of a new job and looking after her daughter, cannot be easy I suggest.

“So sometime it’s very hard ‘cos every day you are living like in the two different lives, because you are here in London for safety, but your heart, your soul is in Ukraine because my family is in Ukraine… my brother, my cousins, all of them, they are soldiers and they have to fight”.

And her daughter?

“When she wakes up in the morning every time – we haven’t any problem about going to school… the head teacher said ‘we are so happy to have her at the school’… my daughter tells me ‘Mum I like Ukrainian language, it’s my native language –but I like English the same!’.”

What does she feel now on reflection?

At first, “we thought that the war will start, will finish after maybe two weeks, maybe three weeks. So we had very big hope that the war finished very quickly. But after two weeks I understood that no, I’m not right. And it’s long war. So I had to decide what I will do, what I can do, how can I help my country and my people”. ■