Welcome to the 2020/2021 annual interview with the Vice-President of the Queen Mary Law Society: Yohaan Abraham. Yohaan answered all your questions from what the Law Society does, what you can expect and how to join.
Get to know the Vice President: Yohaan is a second year LLB student with particular interest in commercial law who aspires to become a solicitor.
Queen Mary Law Society is the largest law-related student society at Queen Mary University of London. For law students and non-law students alike, we serve to represent all students seeking a career in the legal sector. We connect our members with industry-leading law firms and other organisation to help kick start their careers in law. Apart from career and academic-related events, we host a range of socials including the prestigious Annual Law Ball.
As the elected Vice President of the Queen Mary Law Society, I oversee the overall efficient functioning of the society. After being elected in March we tasked with selecting a new committee. After being selected, the committee and I spent the summer liaising with law firms and other organisations to help secure sponsorships for the benefit of the society. There is a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes in the organising of an event. I help direct the activities of the committee in order to ensure that our members get the most out of events.
You can purchase a membership to our society from the Students’ Union website. We organise an event almost every week. We do not expect our members to attend every event that we organise, we simply offer a wide variety of events for members to choose from based on their interests.
Being a member of the Queen Mary Law Society will allow you exclusive access to events that we host throughout the year. We offer several access points to students to help further their careers. For example, we invited the Global Co-Chair of the Media, Sports and Entertainment group at one of the world’s largest firms. Being able to ask meaningful questions to such legal luminaries can help our members further their applications for opportunities such as vacation schemes and training contracts. Apart from these events, our members also receive significant discounts on tickets to our social events.
Personally, for me, the Law Society has helped me meet so many new people with similar career ambitions as mine. This alongside the opportunity to interact with important personalities from the industry has been an extremely rewarding experience for me.
Being elected amidst the pandemic was an undeniably a challenging experience. Despite the uncertainty, I must commend the sincere efforts our committee has put in to ensure the smooth transition of events. By July our partners and we had reached the conclusion that all our events would have to inevitably host virtually. It has been quite a learning curve for us, I still struggle with the Zoom controls! But nevertheless, I believe we are doing quite well.
I remember deliberating whether or it was worth spending money to purchase a membership in my first year. I decided for it and it was most certainly worth the investment. The learning and networking opportunities that we have to offer are invaluable. We very much look forward to having you join us.