Iuliia

FEATURE

Iuliia

Ukranian lawyer living in the UK

Iuliia

Iuliia is a refugee and legal professional also from Ukraine. Like Nataliia, she left with her child, a boy of 11, to escape the war, “My story may be not easy, not difficult,” she says with humility… “I was writing a dissertation on immigration at the time… and wrote that when you move to a new country as an immigrant you go through 3 stages; the honeymoon stage, the frustration stage, the recovery stage….I had to skip the first 2 stages and begin with the recovery!”

Like Natallia, Iuliia networked within the field, being both a beneficiary of these emergent networks and a volunteer supporting other Ukrainian refugees. She too found work, as a litigation consultant. I asked her how she managed to apply her legal training from Ukraine to the UK context.

“So we have some differences between Ukrainian legal system and the UK…in Ukraine we have a labour code, in the UK you have employment rights act… in the Ukraine we use the highest court decisions, in the UK you use the common law like case law… it is more similar than we could realise. …I had a hearing in Scotland and the Scottish litigation process is very close to the Ukrainian one… so when I had my hearing I used the experience that I have from Ukraine… it was something that I could just transfer from Ukraine.”

I asked whether these ‘transferable skills’ were recognised by UK employers.

“I think the legal market is so big… and if employers realise that it is possible they may look at it from a different perspective… but we need to help the employers”.

How?

“You need to give lawyers here the same language that they use… so when you have a ‘specialist’ in Ukrainian, you put ‘consultant’… or when you have ‘main specialist’ in Ukrainian, you edit it to ‘senior associate’ – in this way people just see something familiar and they maybe understand more…”.

She laughs modestly at the simplicity of her logic so as to deflect any credit. I ask about her son.

“He’s 11… he told me that it is the best school ever... his favourite lesson is English!”.

Does she want to add anything, I ask.

“I hope my story will help somehow others, maybe someone who reads it will get some ideas from me… it’s really important for other refugees”.

And on reflection, I venture, has she completed the 3 steps to recovery…

“Well I began from the third, so I tried to cheat!”. ■