Partner Sangeeta Rabadia’s Interview with ESG Director, Ian McDowell and her commitment to community service.

For Spencer West Partner Sangeeta Rabadia – a family law and private client specialist – community service is second nature.

Ian McDowell, Community and ESG Director, wanted to find out why.

Sangeeta, the work you’ve been doing is community-orientated, covering education, but also wider issues of community solidarity. What makes you so tirelessly committed to these things?  

My parents and family have always been associated with our local Hindu temple. It’s a particularly community orientated one. My Dad is Vice President and was Secretary, so service has always been part of my upbringing. As a family at the weekends we were always doing things. When I was younger, I helped run the temple’s youth club, doing camps and providing seminars on moral and ethical teaching. It’s totally part of who I am.

When I became qualified, I asked myself “How can I contribute as a lawyer?”, and that was the thing that led me into being a school governor. I do pro bono legal work for them which saves them a lot of money and provides a different perspective.

And aside from your legal input? 

I’ve learned a lot about educational needs and disabilities, about how policy is developed to support those children, and what the boundaries and the barriers are. My child is neuro-divergent and I’ve learned a lot of about how to support my child. It links to the legal side, and because I undertake court of protection work, which encompasses legal capacity, this has helped me to support my clients better.

I’ve found that when I’ve given, I’ve also received.

Did you also benefit from a strong community when you were growing up?

I live in Harrow and I went to the local High School. The teachers did well in terms of making the best with what was available, but I’ve learned as an adult that State schools may not always have access to the best of legal advice. I sometimes end up helping on the legal side, even though this was not my intention at the beginning. I find my contacts in the legal industry can also be helpful to the school in terms of introductions to administrative or public lawyers.

Tell me about your new community project.  

It’s about what you might call life skills: legal, health and social skills. It’s about accessing information better and being more aware of things that impact people in the community. Having a Will for example, or information about how tax liability works, or showing them how to invest in pensions.

Society has been very male dominated. We want to empower women to ask the right questions. And it’s not just about finances, it’s about health as well. Diabetes and heart disease have huge impacts and there are taboos about both women and men talking about these things. We want to create better dialogue and information sharing. The project is either free to access, or for very nominal costs. I get approached sometimes by widows where a patriarch has died and they need a huge amount of support to cope with paperwork.

Would you say that your community work and your professional work lend strength to each other? 

I absolutely would say that. I’m doing some pro bono work within Spencer West, helping a widow who had a dispute with her husband a year prior to his death and had to leave the family home with her 5 young children. Sadly, there’s an unscrupulous executor involved, and this has caused the widow immense stress, difficulty and financial strain.

Sangeeta, thank you. And congratulations on the incredible energy and vision you’re putting into both your professional and your community work.