President’s Jottings

INTRODUCTION

President’s Jottings

SUMMER 2021

As I write this, we are currently in the middle of a pandemic and coming towards the end of an extended period of disruption, involving lockdown and home working for many of the members of Surrey Law Society. It would be remiss of me to not mention some of the many other impactful global shifts that have also taken place in the recent few months, not least because they are tied in closely with the objectives I set when I took up the presidential seat at Surrey Law Society in March 2021.

Before I go into more detail, I must thank my predecessor and the immediate past President Nick Ball who was an excellent lead during a challenging presidency, which extended 4 months beyond the usual 12-month term. His calm and measured leadership was a true blessing during that period. I would also like to thank our CEO Helen Opie, our secretary Kieran Bowe and last but by no means least, our outgoing Treasurer Victoria Clarke. It was an absolute pleasure to work alongside this group of consummate professionals during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

During that period, the society was able to offer a comprehensive series of online content which supported our members in a wide range of practice areas, as well as listening and communication skills.

This thorough range of webinars and seminars will continue during my term in office, and we hope to begin face to face courses as soon as is practicable as well. There is also a plan developing to broaden the content, and this leads me to my own objectives and intentions.

■ I would like to reflect the diversity of our membership by including content that supports and nurtures Surrey’s commitment to diversity in all its forms, to include gender, race and ethnicity, social background and sexual orientation. These are fundamental aspects of ourselves and need to be given due recognition in all aspects of our day to day lives. Therefore, we are looking into bringing you courses that reflect that, and to that end we would welcome all and any suggestions of the type of content you would like to see on our events programme.

■ Secondly, I want to be able to say that Surrey Law Society is doing all that is possible to help our members to not only recover from a long period of lockdowns and partial lockdowns, furloughs and homeworking, but also to thrive in what is undoubtedly going to be a new way of working and living. Our aim is to do this via offering courses that support not only business growth but also that support the mental health and wellbeing of our members. We also share content from the Law Society which will be of benefit to our members.

■ Finally (and this is not an exhaustive list, but I will endeavour to cover as much as I can in my 1 year!) I would like to be able to address the issues faced by our members and their clients around access to justice. The availability of funding which allows access to legal advice and support is being severely curtailed in the criminal sector, the public sector and in civil litigation. This erosion is impactful across all of society, and it is an issue that cannot be swept under the carpet. It impacts the livelihoods of our members and in turn the lives of their clients. We will work with you all to voice our members’ concerns to The Law Society, and I ask that you all read the regular bulletins and updates you are sent so that you are kept updated with the content we are sharing.

In the last 3 months since I became President, I have been able to voice the interests of our members to I. Stephanie Boyce, the President of The Law Society at a meeting attended by over 90 local law societies, where concerns ranged from access to justice; diversity, PII; closure of the Solicitors’ Indemnity Fund (SIF) and the training gaps encountered by junior lawyers while working from home during the pandemic.

We are assured that The Law Society will address all these issues and make the relevant representations. Indeed, at the time of writing, we have today learned that the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has agreed to an extension of SIF for a further 12 months from June 2021. While this has stopped imminent closure, there is still work to be done.

I have also had the opportunity to strengthen ties with other local law societies, notably Kent Law Society, with whom we held a joint event on mental health awareness in May. Thank you to the organisers and to everyone who attended. We hope to bring more collaborative content in the future.

We will continue to represent the best interests of our members and strive to effect positive change to benefit Surrey’s legal community, in all matters impacting our members. ■

Mumtaz Hussain

With all my very best regards,

Mumtaz Hussain

President