President’s Page

When writing this on a cold, wet, dark evening, I am looking forward to putting on my glad rags at the end of next week (5th November) in order to attend the belated DDLS dinner at Pride Park. I will for one night be giving back the title of President to Martin Salt who missed out on the opportunity to host a dinner during this year as President. Due to covid, his term as President will go down in the DDLS history books as unique!

After 18 months of lockdown, face masks, social distancing and gallons of hand sanitiser, it is nice to be able to get out and socialise and spent time eating, drinking and enjoying good company as we used to before our lives all changed beyond recognition.

For those of you attending the dinner, I hope you all have a good time and make the most of being able to mix with friends and colleagues and also hope that you will support me when I host the next dinner which is likely to be in late April 2022.

Since my last article, I have attended the lunch and legal service hosted by the High Sheriff of Derbyshire which was well attended by the judiciary. It was a lovely sunny afternoon and I had the privilege of leading the procession into Derby Cathedral. This was a special occasion and something that I was very proud to do.

I am pleased to confirm that in recent weeks, we have managed to recruit new members to the DDLS Committee. I would like to welcome those new members who are Sam Robinson and Della Copley who came to the most recent meeting and hopefully Lucy Tissington and Sayra Dhillon who will be attending the next one.

I would like to reiterate what I said in my last article and encourage members to take a more active role within the Society by joining a relevant sub-committee. Please get more involved with the Society. It would be nice to see some new faces.

I was disappointed to learn that Derby Junior Lawyers will be disbanded due to lack of support. This is a real shame.

We as a Society would like to encourage any Derbyshire Junior Lawyers to put themselves forward to form a new group who can bring other like-minded colleagues together to socialise, get to know other members of the profession and generally have a good time. This opportunity is not only open to qualified solicitors but also paralegals, trainee solicitors and law students with up to 5 years’ experience who live, work or study in Derbyshire.

Thank you for your continued support and I look forward to seeing many of you next week.

Julie Skill

President, 2021-22