Executive Committee Members

Joanna is well known in courts throughout the country as an expert in the complex field of consumer credit law. She is a Solicitor Advocate, with Higher Rights of Audience, qualified to represent clients in the Higher Courts of England and Wales.

Joanna is highly experienced and passionate about helping people which is reflected in her exceptionally high success rate. Joanna and her dedicated team run a thriving practice where they deal with clients from all over the country and have built a reputation for being the ‘go-to’ consumer credit defence firm in the UK.

Find out more about Joanna by reading our "Get to Know" SOLO article HERE.

Penny has been a SP specialising in family law for 20 years, working with her husband Mike a Forensic Accountant on divorce cases involving business and complex asset and income tracing and Inheritance Act disputes.

She won Worcestershire Family Lawyer of the Year award in 2014 and was nominated for the National Family Law Magazine Family Law Firm of the Year for 2015.

She has appeared on radio and television and, with Mike, has toured their networking pantomime ‘Snow White and the Seven Small Business People‘ internationally, including a notable performance at the 2016 SPG Conference in Prague!

Having worked in some of the most prestigious banking and consultancy organisations, Sukhjit opted to provide a more personal, one to one service and believed that this could be best done through his own practice. He has been based in Goodmayes in Ilford since 2003.

In his private life, Sukhjit likes to get involved in a number of charitable activities, working with organisation to assist people from all backgrounds and ages in reaching moral excellence either in their private life or in their professional capacity.

Whilst he is quite a shy person, Sukhjit has been part of two documentaries exploring the changes that have taken place in the traditional arranged marriage process.

His children are still young and take up a great deal of his time but when he does have time for himself, Sukhjit likes to sit, read a good book and watch the world go by.

Rahil Chaudhari is a Senior Solicitor at Arlingsworth Solicitors. Rahil secured an LLM at University College London and then went on to train and work at some of the most prestigious law firms in the City before joining Arlingsworth in 2005.

Rahil is a highly experienced and versatile solicitor and has practiced in the fields of immigration, family, commercial, employment and litigation for the past 20 years. He now specialises predominantly in immigration, human rights and company law.

Rahil has become a leading authority in these areas. Rahil’s client base spans a wide range of sectors from multinational companies to private individuals.

Rahil always works tirelessly to achieve successful results for his clients and he is driven by providing exceptionally high standards of client care.

Sarah Austin is a Sole Principal of her own Lexcel accredited firm, a serial volunteer, and a contributor. Sarah is a former Honorary Treasurer and executive member of the National Association of Women Solicitors (AWS) and later the Women Lawyers Division (WLD). She represented AWS and WLD for the maximum term of twelve years on the Law Society Council. As well as serving on the Law Society Board, Audit and Risk Committee, Policy and Regulation Board and Equality, Diversity Inclusion Committee.

Currently she is a member of the Judicial Appointments Advisory Group, considering selection exercises for fairness and accessibility. Whilst the Chair of the Lexcel Panel, she promoted it especially amongst smaller firms and sole practitioners. She has authored articles, contributed to consultations, committees, boards and working parties, addressing inclusion, social mobility and governance. In addition, she holds statutory appointments for the Councils of Buckinghamshire, Milton Keynes, Luton, Bedford and Central Bedford Council, as their Independent Person, dealing with complaints brought against parish, town and county councillors.

Having qualified as a solicitor in India in 1983, one would say that my journey has been a challenging one! I then settled in England, raising a young family and running a  grocery shop, I found myself wanting to go back to what I had studied so hard for at Punjab University Chandigarh, Punjab, India.

In 1993, I joined Staffordshire University Law School and began my conversion qualification the CPE and then the Legal Practice Course. In all, this took until 1996. Once I had qualified it took a further few years before I found a firm that would give me the opportunity to complete my articles and I qualified as a solicitor on 01/06/2004.

It wasn’t until 01/08/2005 that I finally became self-employed the irony being that I bought the firm of Caswell, Lane & Bowater trading as CLB Lawyers which is also the initials of my name - it was fate! Since then, I have gone onto to expand this firm which already had three firms under it to buying Dean & Co., in 2015, which had two branches under its umbrella. A further opportunity allowed me to expand my firm to two branches so, on 01/10/2020 I bought my new branch office which was originally known as Barry Green Solicitors. The success of my firm has allowed me to expand my workforce and enabled me to allow other solicitors to train with CLB Lawyers.

Our main areas of work are Residential Conveyancing, Wills, Probate, Commercial Property leases, buying and selling Business, our work is all private client based. I very much work in a calm collected manner and luckily the ethos within my firm has the same calibre of staff. Having built up a good reputation in the area of Dudley, West Midlands the work coming into the firm is very much an existing loyal client base and ‘word of mouth’ which I am extremely thankful and proud of.

It is a privilege to be joining as an Executive Committee Member of the SPG and I hope to bring in my experience and expertise to this Group.

Tahira has been a practicing solicitor for 20 years. She set up as a sole practitioner after being made redundant in 2010.

She has found the SPG to be an extremely helpful point of contact on so many issues which are affecting the whole profession whilst paying particular attention to the needs of Sole Practitioners. Tahira understands that being a sole practitioner can be a lonely experience but networking with like-minded individuals makes all the difference.

She is glad that there is an independent body outside of the Law Society that is working hard to look after its members interests.

Tahira is based in Bury, Greater Manchester where she lives with her family. She has lots of interests outside of the law including politics. Tahira was previously an LEA school governor and has stood as a candidate in the local elections and is passionate about civic duty and putting something back into the community.

It is a lot to juggle with but Tahira is proud of the work of the SPG because she believes in better representation for Sole Practitioners!