About us
Healthcare Legal Consultancy Ltd was created in a small NHS Legal Services office during the pandemic. The ethos? Create what we considered to be a perfect department in other NHS organisations.
About Puja
Sarah and I first met at St George’s NHS Trust in London in 2015 when we were both Legal Services Managers. I am a qualified lawyer and during my training at an NHS panel firm, I was also selected for a secondment to NHS Resolution and a Trust.
About Sarah
I have a CILEX and OU legal and clinical risk qualifications, along with 15 years’ experience working in the legal departments of NHS Trusts, both acute, community services and mental health.
We have between us a combined 8 years’ experience as Heads of Legal Services in various Trusts.
How Healthcare Legal Consultancy Ltd was created:
In 2018 after completing some contract work, Puja was approached about an interim Head of Legal role in a London trust where she then stayed for 4 years. We were working in neighbouring trusts as Heads of Legal Services and therefore had reason to be in contact frequently, where we would discuss best practices and our ideas about how a model legal department would work. In 2021 Sarah joined Puja’s trust and we put those ideas into practice, running an incredibly efficient legal department with just two people that had an excellent reputation, both internally and externally, and no need for additional resources or to expand the team. Perhaps arrogantly, we genuinely believed that we had created a perfect department and realised through our experiences that sadly very few in-house legal teams worked as well in this way. HLC was created from this moment and in late 2022 we determined to take our way of working into other NHS legal departments. We both have a genuine love for the NHS and a desire to improve legal services for the benefit of the whole trust. We want to recreate our model in other trusts if possible.
We admit that what made our roles work was our passion for the job but we also know that the processes and the efficiency that we worked with was appreciated and respected amongst our peers.
We believe that we are unique in what we are offering. We eventually hope to work with NHSR, GIRFT and panel firms to ensure that one by one, we are improving legal services in the NHS.