Housing/landlord and tenant
that “covered a mixture of transactional and contentious work and gave a good insight into the firm’s real estate backbone and client base”. Real estate focus Real estate was always in Emily’s eyeline, especially after completing work experience with in-house property teams and working as a paralegal in a law firm’s commercial property department. Undertaking seats with real estate teams during her training contract at Trowers & Hamlins confirmed these aspirations, while gaining experience in litigation “added a new angle to real estate that I hadn’t considered before”. It became a career that Emily really saw herself in. Cut to a few years later and Emily has been qualified since 2016. She summarises her work as “providing an advisory role for clients on a range of issues that may prove to be contentious”. As an example, “you might have a client that needs a steer on strategy for a development project where dispute and risk avoidance is key. The other side of the work involves resolving disputes that have already arisen – this might be through interparty correspondence, settlement discussions or alternative dispute resolution, such as mediation”. When litigation is unavoidable, Emily’s team will “get involved with pre-action correspondence, issuing or defending claims, case management, trial preparation and often working closely with barristers”. What are the sorts of issues Emily deals with? “Landlord and tenant issues on things like forfeiture, breaches of lease, rent arrears” she clarifies. On bigger residential development projects this might involve advising clients on their obligations under a development agreement, and a whole array of other issues that come with that type of work.” As already mentioned, the work is varied and it can be difficult to define a typical day.
Relationships between the owners and occupiers of properties, both residential and commercial, can be fraught with problems. There’s a raft of UK legislation governing the rights and obligations of landlords and tenants, which supplements the contractual relationships between them. The terms of leases typically cover parties’ obligations, such as who is responsible for repairs to a building; how it may be used; and how and when rent will increase. Despite this, disputes arise regularly. Lawyers encounter all kinds of problems from bankrupt restaurateurs with back rent to pay, to unlawful sub- lettings and the mysterious appearance of a roof extension or cellar. More recently, lawyers have been dealing with issues arising as a result of the covid-19 pandemic, including tenants/businesses unable to pay rent. If there’s one word to describe Emily Putz’s work in Trowers & Hamlins’s property dispute resolution and litigation team, it would be ‘varied’ – in terms of the type of clients and the work she gets involved in. “I could be advising a housing association or a local authority on a residential development project, and in the same morning also be advising a private investment fund on a commercial landlord and tenant dispute over a breach of a leasehold covenant, for example,” Emily explains. Covering both residential and commercial real estate matters, her hands are certainly kept full as she juggles advisory work with the litigious. Describing her route into the law from a history undergraduate degree, Emily says that becoming a solicitor was a choice made a few years after graduation, although she dabbled with the idea while studying. After completing her law conversion course, Emily trained at Trowers & Hamlins which she describes as a “fantastic two years” in which she sat in a variety of practice areas
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