Last night we attended the LLG Annual Awards ceremony (virtually of course)!

 

Our Trainee Solicitor, Sara Fayaz was a finalist in the Junior Lawyer of the Year category and we are delighted to announce that Sara was awarded highly commended in the category.

Sara always goes the extra mile for her clients; embedding the department’s ethos of providing excellent client care.  She is passionate about serving the local community and always ensures that customer focus is at the heart of her work.  This has been demonstrated in her commitment to turning around contracts with tight timescales so that services can be delivered; and taking the lead on a multiagency data sharing agreement to facilitate referrals and signposting to patient-lead groups to assist primary healthcare providers in the borough.

Since joining Gedling Borough Council Sara has championed climate change action and is taking a leading role in the authority’s climate emergency action group. Sara has reviewed and revised the authority’s licence agreements for events held on its land and its terms and conditions for room bookings in relation to its leisure and community centers and the Civic Centre to ensure consistency with the authority’s objectives. Balloon releases and the use of sky lanterns are prohibited and single use plastic is discouraged. This was a large scale piece of work as it involved liaising with several client departments including the authority’s estates team, leisure, community relations and PASC departments and executive sign off. She is also looking at what steps the authority can take when procuring new contracts to ensure carbon reduction and / or management issues are embedded throughout its procurement and contract management processes.

Sara has demonstrated her commitment to local government through her work with the East Midlands branch of LLG. Sara volunteered to become the treasury for the East Midlands branch, and has assisted with the launch of a junior division within the branch supporting the project lead by contacting other junior lawyer branches to share experiences and ideas. She is enthusiastic and committed to not only promoting local government as a legal career but also improving and encouraging support and communication between junior lawyers in the East Midlands.

Sara has exceeded all expectations in her role as a trainee solicitor. She has excelled in the role to date and exemplifies all of the qualities you could wish to have in a trainee. Sara will make an excellent solicitor and I hope she remains within local government post qualification as it would be a real loss to sector to lose someone so committed, driven and passionate about serving the local community.