Choose your Leeds JLD Committee for 2024
LLS LIAISON & NATIONAL REPRESENTATIVE:
Suellen De Lima Silva

I believe that I would add value to the role as I am a newly qualified associate from a unique background as I have trained in-house and currently work at Hill Dickinson LLP. My previous experience makes me keen to ensure that junior lawyers from a variety of backgrounds are represented in the Leeds Junior Lawyer Division (Leeds JLD), the National Junior Lawyers Division and the Leeds Law Society.

 

I have experience as a committee member for the Peterborough Young Lawyers Group (PYLG) where we organised a variety of events for junior lawyers in the Peterborough area. As a committee we liaised with both the Peterborough and Cambridgeshire Law Societies as well as the Cambridge Junior Lawyers Division (Cambridge JLD) whilst the Peterborough Law Society merged with the Cambridgeshire Law Society and the PYLG merged with the Cambridge JLD. As part of the merger, we ensured that the feedback of the members of the PYLG was given to the law societies to ensure that the members still had representation and would still have access to events and support closer to home. We negotiated that the PYLG would continue as a subdivision of the Cambridge JLD to host smaller events for those located in north Cambridgeshire. By joining the Leeds Junior Lawyer Division, I would like the opportunity to use my previous to do more by representing a group with a larger membership cohort in such forums, like we were able to do in the aforementioned merger.

 

On a personal level, I would like to form part of the committee as it was something that I genuinely enjoyed being part of the PYLG. I am still new to Leeds and growing my own network and I know that this tends to be a similar situation that a lot of juniors often find themselves in; in a new city and making new connections. I hope that by being part of the committee I will be able to assist the committee to provide a space for juniors to develop and to give a voice to the junior lawyers in Leeds at the wider forums.