CEO Report

INTRODUCTION

CEO Report

WINTER 2023

As I write this, we are nearing the end of a very busy year at Surrey Law Society, it’s snowing outside and everyone is gearing up for Christmas. However, by the time you receive the magazine the festive period will be over and 2023 upon us; I hope that you all had a welldeserved break over the holidays and enjoyed time with family and friends away from the desk.

2022 has been a fantastic year for Surrey Law Society, and we hope that you have felt the benefits of your membership over the past 12 months. It’s hard to believe that at the beginning of the year the country was still in the grips of the pandemic and as we made plans for the early part of 2022, we were still unsure about the viability of some in-person events; we’re delighted that in the end we were able to provide a full programme of activity for you.

The Society hosted over 10 webinars in 2022 covering a variety of topics including CQS, the Family Solutions Initiative, Contested Wills and Estates, No-Fault Divorce, Cohabitation Claims & Property Disputes for Unmarried Couples and Mortgage Lending Requirements for Conveyancers. These sessions were available free of charge to SLS members, and we hope that you felt they represent excellent value for your membership of the Society. We supplemented the webinar programme with longer online courses on Protecting you and your Client – Guidance for Residential Conveyancers, Pensions and Life Policies in the Context of Estate Planning and CryptoAssets in Divorce & Separation. We were also thrilled to resume our inperson training, holding 5 courses, this year at TWM’s offices in Guildford, with an excellent offering of speakers, Professor Lesley King, Robert Jamieson, John Bunker, Stephen Desmond and David Keighley.

2022 saw the continuation of our collaboration with Surrey Junior Lawyers Division on the Supporting Surrey programme, which this year focused on mental wellbeing, and we hosted 3 webinars for members of both organisations that looked at Work Life Balance, Imposter Syndrome and Having Difficult Conversations. Each webinar was followed up with an article in the Surrey Lawyer, the most recent of which can be viewed later in this issue. Don’t forget that you can also view recordings of the webinars on the Surrey Law Society’s vimeo channel.

We were also delighted to have run all our scheduled social events for the year including the highest ever attendance at our annual go-karting event, the Past President’s Championship Cup. We received more nominations than ever before at our SLS Legal Awards and enjoyed a fantastic evening celebrating the work of members in September, with an excellent afterdinner speech from Clive Anderson. In March, we honored the contribution of our dear friend John Perry, at the Society’s inaugural John Perry Memorial Dinner. The evening was full of warm memories of John, and we were delighted that his wife Rosemary and daughter Lucy were able to join us on the night. We concluded our social events programme with the Legal Brain of Surrey Quiz, held in November at the Weyside in Guildford, and you can read more about that evening later in the magazine.

All the above activity would not have been possible without the generous support of our Surrey Law Society patrons, and we’re thrilled that 2022 saw the Society forge partnerships with more annual patrons than ever before. I would therefore like to extend my warm thanks to each and every one of them for their continued support and for the numerous contributions that they have made to the Society’s training and events throughout the year. They are:

■ Chadwick Nott

■ Conscious Solutions

■ Evelyn Partners

■ Finders International

■ Howden

■ Landmark Information Group

■ LawSure Insurance

■ Moneypenny

■ Tower Street Finance

2022 also saw the creation of the Surrey Law Society’s ED&I Committee, and it is great to see this group going from strength to strength. The committee has been extremely active over the year and has organised a free webinar for members in March on Workplace Diversity and Inclusion which was delivered by the excellent Mary Eniolu, created an EDI Calendar, scheduling informative social media posts on key dates to provide information about the importance of certain religious festivals and inclusivity initiatives, as well as attending the Pride in Surrey parade in August. The Society has also introduced a Focus on EDI section to the Surrey Lawyer magazine, and we hope that you have found the articles included in the past year informative. If you have any content that you would like for us to include in the Focus on EDI section, please do send this to me. Moving forward, the EDI Committee has great plans including an initiative to engage with secondary school children, to encourage a career in the law for everyone, irrespective of factors such as background, race, ethnicity, gender and we look forward to sharing more on this shortly.

In March, we were delighted to take on Elouise as the Society’s Membership and Events Coordinator. Elouise joined us through the Government’s Kickstart Scheme and has proved to be a great asset to the team. The Society also took on a shared office space at this time and Elouise and I can be found there on Mondays and Thursdays, so if you are ever in Sutton and would like to come and visit us, please do get in touch.

As we look to the future, the Society has some exciting projects in the pipeline, including a new website and members only area, as well as new full programme of training and events, which you can view in this magazine. We’re also looking to increase our committee so that we can engage in many more new initiatives, so if you’re interested in helping the Society to build on its existing work, we would love to hear from you.

all a wonderful Christmas and New Year; I hope that you are feeling refreshed and ready for 2023 by the time you read this. ■

Helen Opie

Helen Opie

Chief Executive & Magazine Editor