Getting the message across

Interview with Caroline Flanagan | 16th May 2005 | Peter Nicholson

With the profession having been psyched up to expect seismic changes in the near future over regulation, complaints, legal aid and more, you might expect the incoming President to feel that she had somehow drawn the short straw as respects her term of office. But Caroline Flanagan is remarkably unperturbed at the prospect of taking over the hot seat at the present time.

“The year will be nothing if not exciting”, she predicts, but “exciting and challenging rather than earth-shattering. I’m really looking forward to it.”

When someone who initially came to the law “purely by chance” – she was going to study languages until she decided it had too few career options – and admits to a laid back style of leadership, finds herself as the Society’s first woman President, it may suggest that fate has played the major hand in Caroline’s progression. Nevertheless one can assume that a great deal of hard work has also paved the way.

Combining a court practice in a six-partner firm in Dunfermline with achieving an accredited specialism in family law, a family of her own and serving the necessary time on Council (she has seven years behind her), is not for the faint hearted. However she denies having experienced any of the obstacles sometimes said to hinder the progress of women solicitors.

“I have not seen any barriers as a woman in the profession. Yes, I’m the only female partner and the first female partner in my firm, but that’s just the way it turned out.” She does await with interest the results of the large-scale equal opportunities survey just carried out by the Society, perhaps as much as the big-picture developments facing the profession.

New Presidents might sometimes profess the intention to hit the ground running. Caroline may consider herself lucky to keep her feet on the ground at all, if her year as Vice President is any guide. 

“It’s gone past in a complete whirl of activity. It’s probably been busier than I expected, but that’s really to do with the team based approach that we have – the Vice President elect gets taken straight into things as much as they can, so it’s much busier than it used to be and gives you a much better grounding for being President.”

Many of the issues the Society faces are bigger than a single term of office. The President’s Committee this past year has continued to devote much of its time to the Client Relations Office, which has now met its target of dealing with 90% per cent of complaints within nine months, but remains the focus of media scrutiny and a long-expected Executive consultation paper. However if Caroline Flanagan has one single thing she wants to improve in her year, it is communication.

Tell it like it is

“I mean communication at all levels. The profession is the biggest and most obvious target. Sometimes I feel that being on Council can be a bit like being a new trainee in the office who does a lot of good work for their client but then forgets to tell the client what they did. So the client ends up wondering what it was all about. I think because we rely so much on people who give their time voluntarily and have such a high volume of work, we sometimes forget that it’s not just about getting the job done; it’s also about telling the profession, the public and anyone who is interested, what you’ve been doing.

“There are so many things this year that you can see already will have to be expressed and communicated. The Justice 1 consultation paper, the effect of the withdrawal of the table of fees, and legal aid where there is so much work going on. So communication with the profession, communication within the building, between Council and Executive and communication with all the stakeholders is going to be vitally important.”

She also wants, she says, the Society’s Council and Executive “to feel good about itself” – realising that all their work is worthwhile and appreciated. “Council and the Executive achieve disproportionate results considering their numbers and resources. That is a tribute to their expertise and commitment. The Society has changed almost beyond recognition in the time since I joined Council and it is heartening to see it as healthy as it is. I would like that to be recognised.” So perhaps it’s appropriate, she adds, that next year’s annual conference, now set for 10 March, will mark the Journal’s own 50th anniversary by taking up the communication theme.

High on the agenda

Although the Clementi review process has been the biggest issue of Duncan Murray’s year, Caroline expects the election to slow its progress in England and Wales even if Labour is returned, so its effect, if any, in Scotland is likely to be a little further down the track, as she puts it. “Of course the multi-jurisdictional practice rules have facilitated crossing the border. But I think we must wait and see what changes the review process and the new rules will bring to regulation and membership.”

She also insists that despite the steady polarisation of the profession between large and small firms, the Society can continue to regulate both, since the core values that it regulates are still the same.

Aside from the complaints handling and the equal opportunities survey, she believes one of the biggest issues of her term will be legal aid: “It’s always high on the agenda. I do legal aid work myself so I am well aware of the issues”. That, and deciding what guidance can be given on feeing in the absence of a recommended table.

“The other issue that might come up, or start to come up, during my year is the number of trainees, or Diploma students looking for traineeships. The LLB is increasingly recognised as an excellent degree which opens doors to many careers, but there will be limited places in the profession and I want to make sure that students are aware that the road into the profession is increasingly competitive.”

Supply and demand

Paradoxically, when asked later what other issues she thinks are most pressing for the average practitioner, she immediately answers “Staff – recruiting and retaining staff.” She explains: “I think one of the most common difficulties at the moment, which I think affects many firms, is staff at non-partner level. It’s not just qualified staff; it can also include support staff and trainees.”

This has been a difficulty for rural practices for some years, she says, but it is increasingly affecting medium to small firms wherever they are. It affects her own town of Dunfermline, “because we’re very close to Edinburgh which is much ‘sexier’ and often more lucrative to work in than Dunfermline”; the Greenock faculty discussed similar concerns, and she anticipates a similar discussion at the Ayr faculty meeting that evening. Newly qualified solicitors have large student debts to pay off and go for the best pay; and once they are in that environment they find it quite difficult to step out again. 

Perhaps however the pending explosion in trainees will help to counter that, she says: “I hope that the over-supply will mean a larger spread across city and rural practices of all sizes. I think those firms who had been hoping to take on qualified assistants may have to look again, and decide to take on trainees and train them in their type of practice in the hope that they may choose to make their career in that firm or a similar type of firm.”

Managing expectations

With such macro-economic factors at work, do solicitors have unrealistic expectations of what the Society can achieve? “I think people look at the Society as the institution that guides them and tries to help them where they can, so there’s no harm in saying, what are you doing about something, as long as there’s then an appreciation that while in some areas the Society can and does make a difference, there are others where it is limited in how much it can help.” But she can’t resist relating “the strangest one that Douglas Mill told me he once had: somebody said, what can you do about air fares to Edinburgh because they are so expensive. And the answer was, not a lot!”

“What I can and will promise”, she says in closing, “is that I will carry on where Duncan has progressed so many projects and changes over the past year – and I promise to talk about it – a lot!”