Member Article

SCE Solicitors celebrate 10th anniversary after a record-breaking year

HR and Employment Law solicitors SCE Solicitors are celebrating 10 successful years since the firm was founded in 2011. Demand for their legal services, including their specialist mental health in the workplace support, has soared as employers grapple with managing staff through COVID-19 restrictions.

Solicitor-Advocate Samira Cakali started the Leeds-based firm with a mission to provide clients with high-quality legal advice, on time, on budget and in a personal and supportive manner. Since then, the business has grown dramatically, with a team of solicitors and consultants now advising clients in Leeds, Yorkshire and further afield. Collectively, their team of lawyers has over 50 years of legal and commercial experience, including extensive contentious and non-contentious experience in Employment Law and civil litigation, within a range of commercial businesses from SME’s to multinationals.

The firm has seen a huge increase in demand recently with many employers coping with the impact of the coronavirus outbreak, furloughing staff, adapting to remote working and dealing with redundancies. Alongside those practical business issues, employers have sought help to support their staff through mental health challenges. With an accredited Mental Health First Aider in their team, SCE Solicitors have assisted clients by providing workplace training to line managers and HR professionals on how to recognise mental illness and how to handle difficult conversations when they arise, drafting appropriate absence management and other policies, providing advice about individual employee problems as well as practical tips for supporting employees with mental health impairments without it affecting the manager’s own mental health.

Samira Cakali, founder and managing director says: “I am so proud that we are celebrating SCE Solicitors’ 10th birthday, even though restrictions mean that we can’t yet have the celebration that we would like. Right from the beginning, I had a clear vision of working in partnership with clients to build long term relationships. We like to get to know our clients, their businesses and their employees to provide practical and commercial legal solutions. We hold our clients’ hands through whatever journey they are facing, including working through employment contracts or handbooks, government schemes, redundancy, restructure or TUPE situations, grievances, disciplinaries, an employment tribunal or any other HR/employment issue.

In 2019 we began our partnership with Leeds Mind as I am passionate about mental health in the workplace. Particularly in the wake of Covid-19, many employee’s mental health has been seriously affected. As a Mental Health First Aider, I ran online webinars for managers on how to manage mental health in the workplace as well as providing individual advice. Mental health remains one of the most challenging aspects of employee relations for management to deal with and we will continue to work with employers on this in the future.“

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Caroline Saunders .