Iona Luke

About

Iona has experience working in in-house legal teams of various sizes, including large legal department, mid-sized team, to her current role of sole in-house counsel. She finds that a common perception among in-house lawyers is “what does the Law Society do for us?” If elected, Iona wants to improve the Law Society’s engagement with in-house lawyers and investigate relevant services for in-house lawyers that are not already provided by other organisations.

Iona has first-hand experience of the challenges faced by sole practitioners in an in-house setting. From speaking with other practitioners, Iona believes some of these challenges may be faced by sole practitioners in other segments. She wants to work with the Law Society to investigate the needs of sole practitioners and design programs that can provide support for their practices.

Iona has been serving on Law Society policy committees since 2016, including as Deputy Chair of the Privacy and Data Law Committee (2017, 2018), as a member of the Business Law Committee (2016, 2017, 2019) and the Corporate Lawyer Committee (2017). “The policy committees do a great amount of work through the voluntary efforts of many knowledgeable practitioners. Many of my friends and colleagues do not even know that these committees exist. There is a lot of knowledge and friendship that can be gained from participating in policy committees.”, she says. Iona plans to press for more transparency and visibility in what the Law Society does, so that more lawyers would consider engaging with each other through Law Society’s activities and with the Law Society itself.

Being ethnic Chinese herself, Iona is acutely aware of the importance to enhance cultural and gender diversity in the workplace and on representative bodies. Over the years she has seen increased diversity at the policy committee level, especially among the young lawyer representatives. Iona will advocate strongly for diversity at the Council level and for inclusive initiatives in the legal profession.