Victoria Smith
Victoria's interview
You can find out more about Victoria by watching her interview, or by reading the transcript below, in which she discusses her career journey so far, her area of expertise, and advice she would give herself as an NQ now that she's made Partner.
Take us through your career journey so far.
I started my legal career in a law firm in Cardiff where I grew up. I was specialising in recovering wrongly paid care home fees for families, but my passion really is in housing and from there I moved to London. I worked in a specialist housing law firm for my training contract, I then moved to a couple of other law firms in London before moving to Devonshires just three years ago.
Please could you outline your area of expertise and what attracted you to it?
My area of expertise is housing management and property litigation. I'm part of the large team here at Devonshire. My particular expertise, and passion really, is housing in Wales. I do a lot of assisting landlords in Wales with the changes introduced by the Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016 and general housing management in that area. My other two areas of expertise are dealing with matters involving the Housing Ombudsman, there are arising complaints at the moment and I'm assisting a lot of landlords in dealing with those, amending policies and procedures in light of recommendations introduced by the Housing Ombudsman's spotlight reports. The other area of expertise is tenancy fraud, which I'm particularly passionate about. I assist landlords with recovering properties where tenants have unlawfully sublet their homes and we also obtained quite large unlawful profit orders where tenants/defendants then need to repay back all the profit they've made.
What would you say to yourself as an NQ now that you’ve made Partner?
Firstly, believe in yourself. Sometimes I am probably my own worst critic, so I would say step back, celebrate the successes and believe in yourself. Also, surround yourself with people that believe in you as well. Again, we're really lucky here at Devonshires that we're a very supportive team and there's lots of people that champion you. So, just make sure you continue to surround yourself with those people and believe in what you do.
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