Surrey Junior Lawyers Division Report

REPORT

Surrey Junior Lawyers Division Report

The 1st November saw many more committee members join Surrey JLD, who all impressed with the skills they had to offer and the shared vision of making life better for our peers.

Adele Edwards joined as our second Events Representative, sharing the responsibilities with the incumbent Kate Lewis. I continue in my role as one of the Social Media and Publication Representatives, administering the LinkedIn and Twitter accounts. I also became the National JLD Representative, where I represent Surrey’s junior lawyers at the committee meetings of The Law Society’s national Junior Lawyers Division. I am pleased to have my fellow Social Media and Publication Representative Alexandra Milson running our Instagram account, not to mention her flair for graphic design (look at the poster she made for our Christmas event to see what I mean).

Improving others’ well-being is at the heart of what we want for Surrey JLD members and it is a pleasure to gain our specialist Wellness Representative, Sonay Erten. Sonay has hit the ground running in her new role, having made a Wellness Hub on our website and written our first blog.

Helping the best talent become solicitors, whether or not you are already working in a law firm, is such a key aspect to what we do that it deserved several new committee members. Our Diversity & Inclusion Representative, Asta Asaka, is joined in this work by CILEx Representative Daniel Crate, Student Representative Tabitha Lee, Career Changer Representative Sapphira Gold and In-House Representative Tilly Greenstreet-Carter.

Maintaining strong links to Surrey Law Society is important to us. Beth Duffy has moved from being our National JLD Representative to our Law Society one, along with becoming our Secretary. Joshua Day continues in his role as Treasurer and has passed the Sponsorship Representative torch to Victoria Batstone. Chantelle De Filippis has become Media & Communications Representative, and our Chair Yasmin Curry continues to be the glue that binds us together.

In the past few months we have: carried out a joint careers initiative with Surrey Law Society “Supporting Surrey: Careers” for current and aspiring solicitors navigating the journey to their next role, particularly in a virtual setting, with an increasingly virtual world; run our regular Cocoa With The Committee to let our members connect and network, and given a presentation to Guildford and Reading’s University of Law students together with JLD Berks, Bucks and Oxon. Perhaps the most fun event of the year was the JLD mixer we enjoyed on 11 November 2020 including committee members of not only Surrey JLD, but JLD Berks, Bucks and Oxon (to whom we are grateful for taking the lead in organising), Herts JLD, and Northants Bucks JLD! We answered quizzes, played Pictionary and at the end of the evening Surrey JLD had won!

Like the Junior Lawyers Division, membership with us is free. If you're a junior lawyer, you're a member. Our members currently include LPC and BPC students and graduates, paralegals, chartered legal executives, conveyancers, trainee solicitors, solicitor apprentices, solicitors of up to 5 years’ PQE, pupil barristers and junior barristers of up to 5 years’ practice.

All you have to do to keep up to date with our events is send an email asking to be added to our mailing list to: surreyjuniorlawyersdivision@gmail.com. ■

Martin Whitehorn

Surrey Junior Lawyers Division