Sell, sell, sell

“I am a medium ordinary lawyer, honest and diligent but no expert in anything. I am, however, if I may say so myself, brilliant at selling.”

Whatever else results from Austin Lafferty’s year as President of the Law Society of Scotland, the public should be a lot more aware of solicitors as a “Good Thing” by the end of it.

Meeting in his cramped office in Giffnock, one of three in and near Glasgow that bears his name, it is a little difficult at first to see Lafferty as anything other than a typical high street solicitor, grateful for whatever business comes in the door. Then you realise that his office doubles as an art gallery – numerous examples of his own and others’ work cover the walls – and you begin to appreciate that this is indeed a man with a number of strings to his bow.

“I want you to say that I’m going to be the first President with a black belt in karate”, he admonishes, “and a professional artist.”

Art school might indeed have claimed him, as might the stage, but he took “the sensible option” and went into law, like his father before him.

Setting up on his own after a few years in practice, mainly at the then Ross Harper & Murphy, he has remained a general practitioner – with a difference, running“an alternative or parallel career” working on radio, TV and newspapers, to which he has now added blogging on various sites.

That media exposure is what convinced him of the need to go out and sell. “I think that when we have the kind of product we have and the potential market that we have, it is just a sin crying out to Heaven for vengeance that lawyers don’t get more up on a platform and sell themselves.” Lafferty can become quite passionate on the subject.

“If you like, the empirical evidence is that for 20 years or so I was on radio and TV every week just talking about law, and that’s what built my business. It wasn’t any brilliance of mine, but I have an image with the public which is the kind of thing that any solicitor worth their salt should be projecting to their existing clients and their potential clients. It’s not rocket science.”

The Society can give a lead, but solicitors have to play their part. “The Society can do so much in projecting the image of the profession but it’s then up to individual solicitors to take that and run with it in their own particular circumstances.”

Love your critics

As has been increasingly apparent, however, the Society also has its work cut out in selling itself to some sections of the profession. Does that hamper Lafferty’s ambitions?

“I proclaim myself to be a lover rather than a fighter. I happen to know most of [the dissenting] voices personally and I’m friends with a great many of them. And what I would always want to be known for is being able to speak one to one, one to a group, and just being physically able to connect with them. Because it is the worst kind of mistake to write or email a strong critical statement which can easily become very personal or very aggressive, instead of going out and shaking hands with people, sitting across a desk or at lunch or in a bar, and actually hammering out the points with them, face to face and in real time.”

He proclaims himself “absolutely desperate” to act as a unifying force. Since Lafferty qualified, a gulf has opened up between his type of practice and the big firms, with the growing number of skills, specialisms and types of firm all tending to “drive people away from the centre”. But, he continues, “I find that when I go anywhere, whether to Wick or to a big firm meeting or an in-house conference or a sole practitioners’ conference, lawyers are just the same kind of people. They happen to do different things in slightly different ways, but fundamentally there is a core in terms of qualification, ability, personality, character, and if I can help people refocus on those things and not simply at their own local special interests, I think we’ll make some progress.

“I’m hoping it won’t be a great sea change for people to remember that they’re fundamentally Scottish solicitors and we’re all in it together, but that will certainly be one of the major tones or planks of my work.”

Two into one does go?

One particular focus for the Society’s critics is the long-running issue of whether its twin statutory functions represent a fatal conflict of interest when it comes to representing members – the more so if it takes on ABS regulation as well.

“I’ve got two complementary answers to that”, Lafferty asserts. “One is that every other professional I speak to says that they envy the solicitor profession for being a unitary profession that gets to represent and regulate at the same time, because these people know the problems when it’s two different bodies.

“But the fact that there are two separate roles, representation and regulation, doesn’t put them in conflict with each other. We’ve managed to get from the establishment of the Society in 1949 till now and Krakatoa hasn’t erupted in the background – we have steered a pretty good course in the interests of solicitors and the general public. It’s right that the thing be looked at again because the world has changed, the ABS regime is coming in. But still fundamentally if you have a Law Society that is properly constituted, people know the difference between representation and regulation, and if there were to be a conflict between them, there is a way to resolve that without splitting the Society away from itself.”

He compares the situation of a client complaint about an employee, who might also be his (Lafferty’s) friend. “That problem is one of both representation and regulation, and if I think there is a conflict of interest what do I do? I don’t split my firm in two, I get a colleague in to look at the matter and advise. If it comes to the worst I can get in the Society. We’re lawyers; our whole job is resolving problems, not creating problems, which is what splitting the Society in two would do. If an actual rather than perceived conflict arose, it would not be difficult to find a way to resolve that without destroying the building.”

And how would he answer those who say they should be able to opt out from the Society? Lafferty says he respects what they want to do, but “I’m afraid the answer to this is a practical one. We get to have the ear of the Government or the media or the public because we are the Law Society of Scotland. Do you think that the Government would set aside time for a single faculty or bar association or whoever, august body of people though they may be? Size is important in this, size matters, and the Society has a name, a prestige, an infrastructure and a bit of weight about it which other bodies don’t have and it would simply diminish the ability to negotiate and plead and fight if we were split up into a number of smaller bodies.”

Tomorrow’s headlines

What, then, can he claim as the main things the Society has achieved for its members, say over the last year or so?

“One is limiting the legal aid cuts. That will be a controversial thing to say because those who have been affected by the cuts don’t see any good in what has happened and I don’t blame them. But given the Government’s determination to slash legal aid for the sake of saving money, and give lip service to benefiting access to justice, the Society has done its best to mitigate that and has been very successful in a number of key areas.”

It has also taken the lead on ABS. “The Society has taken its responsibilities to the general public seriously in seeking to regulate ABSs. Let’s remember that every ABS has a solicitor in it, so it’s inevitable that the Society must seek a role in regulating ABSs, not only in the best interests of the public but in the best interests of our own members. And because we have been so vigorous through people like Philip Yelland and Michael Clancy in engaging with Government, Government is increasingly looking to the Society to lead the process of the birth of ABS. So again it’s important that the Society as a unitary body is seen as at the centre and the forefront of what is going on in political and civic Scotland.”

And its main priorities during his term?

“ABS will come into being, so that will be a huge thing. There is the ongoing question of the annual legal aid cuts that will have to be managed. There is the development of the new routes to qualifying, PEAT 1 and PEAT 2. There are various issues coming up to do with the way students and trainees are coming into the profession – whether too many of them are, whether they should be encouraged to come forward when there is such a limitation on traineeships and indeed jobs.

“Also we do think, I certainly think, that some firms that have not thought ahead are going to come under great pressures because of the economic downturn, whether or not it has bottomed out. There are huge financial pressures on a lot of firms and if these are not addressed, some firms are really going to come up against it and that will be a considerable management issue for the Society, mainly for the staff but also the office bearers.”

Asked what the Society can do for these firms, he replies that it can help ensure that all interests are properly looked after, client and employee alike. “From my background, the mission to explain is always with me and it’s incredibly important that members of the profession and their staff know what statutory underpinnings there are for the way they operate, particularly where things go wrong, and know what options are available to them, both professionally and indeed personally and perhaps emotionally if problems should arise.”

Executive check

The new board has also attracted some flak, as being less transparent and accountable than the elected Council, but Lafferty denies the charge. “In the old days when the profession was small enough and the issues straightforward enough, a Council of a few dozen could realistically debate and decide those things and have an executive quality of its own. But those days are gone and the world is far too complicated for that. It is essential to have a clearing house. But saying that, the board is open to Council members to attend, its minutes are available to any member of Council and I have never yet seen a member, lay or solicitor, being palmed off or ignored. If anything there is a glut of information or paperwork for each member of Council to see coming from the board.

“It also allows a forum to hold the executive to account, and I don’t mean that in a negative way: it’s so that the executive has some place to come to promote ideas, or discuss them, or ask for advice, or debate ideas or projects or results without it having to take up time and attention of a Council of 50 or 60 people.”

He points out that the process of improving the running of the Society began before he joined Council, and will continue after he has gone. “The great thing about the Society, and this is hand on heart, is that it’s dynamic, it’s looking at everything it does, and it is responsive and always pushing forward.”

At the end of his term, then, how would Lafferty like to be remembered? “I would love to get to the end of the year and have people say they feel more part of a unitary profession than they did at the start of it, and that I (from a selfish point of view) had something to do with that. The second thing, which is almost as important, is that I would like the ordinary person in the streets of Scotland to have a better idea of what solicitors do and what kind of people they are.”

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What motivated you to join Council?

“It was really three things. One, my personal friendship with Douglas Mill. He had got me involved in various jobs assisting the Society on the media side of things and he gently encouraged me to go on to Council. Secondly, I was no longer so involved in broadcasting because of the lack of work at BBC and STV and I had a bit of time. And thirdly, I felt I was at a time in my career when I had to try something that was in the law but different from general practice, and I had become interested in the management of law firms and the management of the legal profession.”

What have been your main areas of interest since then?

Client relations – I went straight on to a client relations committee until the number of committees was reduced. Vice presidential duties were taking more time, but I very much regretted not being able to continue in client relations. Other than that I’ve been involved in various things: the organisation of the Journal from the Society’s point of view; I’ve been on two Journal contract panels. It’s really been not so much grand committees but various things on the business of how the Society interacts with its members and with the general public and other organs of Scottish life. I tend to get jobs where presentation of information and image is something to do with it.”

You were an ABS supporter at a time when most small firms were vehemently opposed to ABS. Does that cause a difficulty for you in being seen to represent the interests of smaller firms?

“No, because I’ve been an ABS for the past 25 years or so – I’ve always run a business which is in part law practice, part media presentation and production. I also run a small property company and I do a lot of after dinner speaking. I’ve done things like counselling and management consultancy. I’ve never had a problem with lawyers multitasking and I just see this as multitasking writ large for some lawyers.

“For other lawyers it’s just getting money in from non-solicitor sources, or investment capital rather than loan capital from banks. But however you look at it, it comes back to this, we are solicitors and we maintain the qualities and characteristics of solicitor, but we should be confident enough to turn our hand to all sorts of other things as we go along. Fundamentally for me that’s the definition of ABS: it’s solicitors reorganising themselves but with their own values and expertise at the core.”

Do you see it as something that can be particularly useful to small practices?

I’m only personally familiar with small practices. Even Ross Harper was a network of small practices. So I’ve really only known the small practitioner’s life. But within that there is so much flexibility and there is so much inventiveness that lawyers mostly have not addressed. The old phrase is the world is your lobster. The lobster is ready for cracking, and solicitors – small firms – should be having a more expansive view of their life and work.

Is there a problem of the Society having lost the trust of some members?

“There’s nothing new in that. I remember when I was an apprentice and listening to older lawyers including my father and friends of my father, and whenever the Society was discussed there would always be a number of people in the company that didn’t like, didn’t trust, didn’t appreciate the Society. Lawyers grow up either ignoring the existence of the Society or just having this visceral antipathy towards it. Because the irony is, solicitors see the Society as the Gestapo; the general public see the Society as an old boys’ club to protect them. In a way that’s probably fair enough because it’s somewhere in the middle.”

Isn’t that the conflict of interest thing coming in again?

“That is conflict of interest by ignorance.”

What next for the Society’s constitution?

“I can say selfishly that I’m glad that the issue of the constitution, which has been a divisive one, has been put two steps back. There is so much else for me to concentrate on that I think I can usefully contribute to, whereas with the constitution I was always feeling that I was leaving things to more expert people… I was well aware that the details and the broader sweeps of the constitution had been thought through by better minds than mine, on both sides.”

What does that mean for its ambitions to be an ABS regulator?

“I think we will be in good shape to be a regulator. Some of the changes we were needing to do have already been done, but so far as I’m aware there is no problem about us being seen as fit to be a regulator.”

Interests outside the law?

“I’ve done karate since I was 17; I train like a devil. When I reached the age of 50 I wanted to not slide into old age so I went back to karate. I train twice a week and I’m a second dan black belt.
“Painting is the one thing that keeps my mind out of the pile of files. And whenever the time comes to hang up the gown I’ll retreat to either the north east of Scotland or the south of France and paint there.”