Editorial
From the President... After a very long two years away we were delighted to finally be able to host our Annual Dinner on 9th June 2022, returning to the historic Old Palace at Hatfield House. It was a fabulous evening, with record numbers in attendance, and I hope that those of you that attended enjoyed the evening as much as I did. It truly was a pleasure to see everyone back out there in person, all dressed up and having a good time. Vice President, and incoming President, of the Law Society of England & Wales Lubna Shuja and the High Sheriff of Hertfordshire, Sally Burton were both excellent speakers, and I could not help but be dazzled by the skills and talent of both the magician Ben Wolfe and caricaturist, Dan Pilkington, who entertained us for the evening. A full report with pictures from the evening is on pages 14-19, but I would again like to say a special thank you to both Judith Gower the Treasurer and Honorary Secretary of HLS and Diana Kirsch the Vice President of HLS, for their invaluable assistance with the organising and planning of the event this year. Huge thanks also to our headline sponsor Poweredbypie (a Dye & Durham Company), and our other sponsors for the evening DictateNow, Badenoch & Clark, Tower Street Finance and EstateSearch. HLS continues to maintain its commitment to members this year by running a diverse
range of professional development events. Hertfordshire University and Hertfordshire Law Clinic in conjunction with HLS ran an interactive discussion on the new no fault divorce rules in April and we subsequently ran a Private Client professional development event in June in conjunction with our sponsor, EstateSearch. We have three further professional development events scheduled for later in the autumn on Conveyancing, Family and Compliance issues and I would urge members to please attend the events as they are free for HLS members and therefore good value for our member firms. In mid-May I attended the local law societies virtual town hall meeting hosted by the President I. Stephanie Boyce and Vice President Lubna Shuja. Top of the agenda was a call to action to support the Law Society’s criminal legal aid campaign to stop criminal legal aid from collapsing. In five years’ time, we may no longer have a criminal justice system worthy of the name: • The number of criminal legal aid firms has almost halved in the last 15 years • duty solicitors are increasingly scarce in some parts of the country • only 4% of duty solicitors are under the age of 35 After 25 years of cuts, the government now has the opportunity to invest in our justice system and put it on a sustainable footing. However, the government’s proposals for criminal legal aid for solicitors are 40% below what the Independent Review of Criminal Legal Aid identified as the bare minimum needed to
It’s too hot for a cat! A
pologies for the delay in writing this but the weather is far too hot. You try walking around in a fur coat and bare feet in this weather. I don’t usually like fans but I have discovered I do when it blows cool air in my direction. They keep cool by swimming in lakes – why? Water is horrible stuff. They also eat ice-creams or lollies which I am not allowed to have. They
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mutter about vitamin D but I’m getting my vitamin M for mouse or B for bird! Just as they stop shouting at the TV for one reason they start for another reason – why? What is wrong with you hoomans. We work out who is top cat by having screaming matches and fights you decide by elections between certain people. Madness! Let them have a good cat fight and that will sort it all out. My hooman mother has been meeting up with
start to address the crisis. Learn more about what the Law Society is doing here https:// www.lawsociety.org.uk/topics/legal-aid/ defending-the-future-of-criminal-legal-aid and get involved if you can. On the lovely sunny evening of 7th July I attended a drinks reception and the formal renaming of the Grace Ononiwu Law Court Building at the University of Hertfordshire in honour of Dr Grace Ononiwu CBE, alumna and the first Afro-Caribbean person to serve as Chief Crown Prosecutor in the UK and currently Director of Legal Services for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). It was a fantastic evening of food, drink and entertainment with some awe-inspiring stories from Grace and her fellow alumni. Coming up (and at the time of writing), I am due to attend the local law society conference on the 14th July and then the day after I am in the Isle of Wight for the second meeting of the year of the Southern Area Association of Law Societies (SAALS), and I look forward to updating the members on both, in the autumn. Once again I thank the committee who all volunteer and are busy working hard to plan for more events in the year. If you have any interest in joining the committee or any ideas for events, lectures or seminars then please get in touch. Steve Hamilton President, Hertfordshire Law Society
the golden one and his mother on Fridays recently. They did come in last Friday to see people and he demanded to go in the garden. Luckily I stayed upstairs pretending to be asleep. How his cat Oliver manages I don’t know. I forgot to mention that I was 5 on July 22nd. They wished me happy birthday but didn’t buy me anything! I gave myself a present of a bird. @princessgigi2019
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