The Law Society Annual Dinner

The school year had just kicked off and all I had was a vague awareness of a huge event happening at some point after the new year. Nevertheless, after hearing horror stories from previous committees who started with their tasks too late, I jumped into action. First things first, we needed a time and a place. In this case it was quite easy: no one would accept the dinner taking place anywhere else but the John’s great Hall and hence I just had to find a free Saturday in February to book. Once that was done, the most interesting thing followed: choosing the guest speaker. They had to be someone capable of delivering a suitable 30 minutes long address which would be accessible to undergraduates but still interesting to professors. They had to be someone who helps us maintain the gender diversity of the speakers over the years. After some deliberation I was set on a Court of Appeal judge who was just appointed to the Supreme Court. With some controversial judgments under his belt, his name is well known to law students. Fortunately, he accepted my invitation.

The last main obstacle was the issue of sponsorship. As the event had to be a four-course dinner so as to maintain standards, the price quickly climbed way over the budget of many students. This means that sponsorship is necessary to make the price of the dinner more affordable. I emailed numerous firms, in turn offering them the possibility of free tickets for their representatives so they could treat this event as a recruitment one. However, as there is no opportunity for the sponsors to do a proper presentation of their activities, our offer may not seem attractive to many. Luckily, this issue was also resolved and I could move on to sending over nine hundred invitations.

Then there was the fun part of the process where I got to pick the menu and put together a seating plan. My goal was to seat students next to alumni whose jobs the particular student admires so they can make the most of the event. After everything was set, only my speech was left to be written and the event was ready to kick off!