Law alumnus awarded Junior Lawyer award at annual celebration

A former Law student was recently celebrated by the Cardiff and District Law Society who named her Junior Lawyer of the Year at their annual dinner.

Lisa-Marie Knight, 28, was a student at the School of Law and Politics from 2007 where she gained a first-class Law degree, followed by a masters in Law and a postgraduate diploma in legal practice with distinction.

Lisa-Marie now works as a trainee solicitor at Cardiff based law firm, Acuity Legal as part of their corporate team and will qualify as a solicitor in September this year.

Lisa-Marie was selected as the Junior Lawyer of the Year from a shortlist of lawyers from the region, with the judges commending her for demonstrating levels of knowledge, capability and judgment well beyond her years.

Since joining Acuity Legal in 2015, Lisa-Marie has completed a successful secondment to the in-house legal function of a global search provider where she worked directly with its CEO and senior managers across the world. She has impressed colleagues with her ability to quickly and skilfully understand and interpret the company’s commercial needs, dealing with multi-jurisdictional issues such as the legal aspects of rolling out a new product across the group’s trading entities, including the USA, Japan and Europe.

As well as discussing her career to date, Lisa-Marie’s submission for the award also covered the experience she gained within the School while working on its innocence project. Lisa-Marie took a leading role in a team of five who overturned the wrongful murder conviction of Dwaine George. The team were successful in putting together a grounds of appeal which they submitted to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, resulting in a referral to the Court of Appeal. The team were the first of any UK university team to successfully overturn a wrongful conviction.

Lisa-Marie said of her award, “I'm absolutely thrilled – it is such an honour! I thoroughly enjoyed my time studying at Cardiff and the various projects on offer outside of the classroom were of huge help with developing skills ready for working life. I’m now at Acuity and it’s a great place to work. I’ll continue my personal and professional development here and am excited about the opportunities that lie ahead.”

Professor Julie Price, who worked with Lisa-Marie in the School said, “The School of Law and Politics was thrilled to hear that Lisa-Marie had won the Junior Lawyer award this year. I had the pleasure of working with Lisa-Marie on our innocence project and our WRU partnership pro bono scheme. I can see why she has been recognised for her hard work while at the School and now in her professional career. We pride ourselves on the opportunities that we give our students  and an accolade such as this proves that the employability skills that they gain here are invaluable after they leave us.”