Vision mission

As someone who thought litigation looked a bit intimidating when she started out, Sheila Webster’s career shows that it’s worth keeping an open mind about opportunities, whatever you may have in mind as your dream line of work.

Taking up the presidency of the Society at the end of this month, Webster believes she has an opportunity to use the many connections and contacts she has made through her work for firms big and small, to engage with and relate to members across the country.

Head of Dispute Resolution at Davidson Chalmers Stewart, she declares herself “hugely proud” to be a Scottish solicitor and part of a profession “that represents all that is best in the law in Scotland”.

Different track

Her career has not been what she planned. After studying at the University of Aberdeen, in her home city, Webster came to Edinburgh with ambitions to be a “hotshot corporate lawyer”, complete with the glamour of midnight pizzas and the like. She didn’t even get a sniff. Training at Brodies, she found herself starting in litigation. 

“Bizarrely, having really been quite nervous of dispute resolution when I started, I realised during my first seat that I loved it. The thrill of litigation was definitely something that gave me a lot of fun.” While she still coveted a corporate seat, fate decreed otherwise: she finished her traineeship back where she started, “and loved it”.

The search for qualified positions during the early 1990s recession took her first to small practice Menzies Dougal & Milligan, then on to Dundas & Wilson for a longer spell that included its years as part of Anderson Legal. After a short break when her twins were born, and feeling the urge to return but to a manageable work-life balance, she took charge of property disputes at niche practice Bell & Scott, before joining her present firm. 

In complete contrast to outgoing President Murray Etherington, who claims never to have been inside a courtroom until he took up office, every post has been in disputes, which Webster now accepts is the work she loves. “There’s an adrenaline rush about appearance in court and doing your best. When you have to think on your feet, and you know you’ve done a good job, there’s a huge feeling of satisfaction – if a judge poses a question and you can answer it you feel great. Probably one of the things I least enjoyed about Covid times was the inability to appear in normal courts. I missed that, just being able to be around the world that I love.”

She adds: “I was saying to one of our trainees that if you end up doing something that isn’t for you, don’t worry, you can change. I wanted to
be a corporate lawyer and look at me now. I’d never have dreamed this was what I wanted to practise, but I really enjoy it.”

Society concerns

As someone who now tells new lawyers at every opportunity to check out committee positions and other ways to become involved with the Society, Webster wishes she had done so at an earlier stage herself. Having harboured concerns that big firms were not sufficiently engaged with the Society to support her standing for Council, her views changed when Christine McLintock and then her former colleague Eilidh Wiseman became President in successive years. “They were a bit of an inspiration: partners in big law firms could become heavily involved with the Society and do good, and what they were able to do just seemed to me to be a little different.”

Joining Council in 2017, the following year she was on the Professional Practice Committee, “a big part of what I really enjoy”, and from 2020 a member of the board. Even so, she needed time to think when approached about putting herself forward for office bearer, but with the strong backing of her partners she decided to have a go. 

“The profession has lots of different aspects and I’m very conscious of following Ken Dalling and others who have had fights about legal aid; it’s not part of my day-to-day practice but the challenge for not just the profession but the country to have a functioning justice system that’s accessible to all, is huge. But I also felt at times that some lawyers particularly in the larger firms have a perception that the Society is really there for the high street firms and doesn’t give enough to the big firms, and I felt I have the experience on both sides that I could perhaps bring something to that, and I hope I can.”

Role model

Her career has at least given her a head start in getting to know solicitors around the country. “Murray teases me that I know everybody in the profession in Scotland and I don’t, I really don’t.” But having previously worked at two of the biggest firms, “The inevitable result is you’re seeing so many people passing through that you do get a very wide range of friends who now are all across the world. I was on a call earlier today with the faculty leaders across Scotland, and when I looked in advance at who would be attending I realised that I have worked with most of them over the years, which Murray thinks is very funny, but that does give me a little bit of traction sometimes because I can go and speak directly to people who know me and know my commitment to things, and that helps, I think.”

Asked about her hopes and aims for her term, she immediately references that she is only the sixth female President in the Society’s history. “I’m hugely proud of being number six; I have two daughters and it’s always been important to me that I’m a role model for them and for people like them.” With a fascination for the equity, diversity and inclusion aspects of the Society’s work, she is very keen to find out why, despite the large number of women entering the profession for years now, there is still such a falloff at the senior end. 

“Why do people leave? I have some fascinating conversations with my own daughters, neither of whom are following us into law, about why they think people stop doing what they do. It’s very easy to slip into a mindset that people have children and they just stop working, but I didn’t do that and there are lots of other senior women who didn’t, so there’s more to it than that. We’ve a couple of discussions ongoing about how we can change that. What can we do as a Law Society? I’m really, really interested in that.”

She also hopes to lead a greater outreach to universities and law students. “I’d like the Society to engage with people at the earliest possible stages of their career. Jock Smith, who was President when I was at university, came to speak to my class at Aberdeen University, and I still remember the impact it had on me, being so impressed that he’d reached that position. I was at an admissions ceremony recently and I said to every one of the new lawyers I spoke to, go and look at the list of vacancies about committees, and ask your firm if you can become involved. You will learn so much; you will meet so many people; it’s a fantastic experience – go and do it! I wish I had done it earlier, and I see one or two trainees and NQs in my firm who are really enthusiastic about offering what they can to the profession, so the more the Society engages with these earlier stages, the better for the future of the profession. We need our future leaders, and the sooner they start the better.”

About the bill

But much of her year is likely to be taken up with negotiations with Government over the Regulation of Legal Services (Scotland) Bill, newly published when we spoke. Although it takes forward long-awaited reforms to the complaints system and, despite pressures from some quarters, preserves the Society’s position as regulator, Webster expresses disappointment at the proposed ministerial powers of intervention, on which the Society focused in its initial response to the bill.

“I entirely agree with Murray’s statement. Direct intervention by Government into the profession doesn’t seem to sit comfortably with the separation of the legal profession and the state which we would have thought was a pretty basic principle. It’s very early days and we’re certainly still having discussions about our response, but I’m totally behind Murray – I share the same concerns and will be pursuing a similar line. Obviously we want to work with Government to make this work, but there are undoubtedly some challenges ahead of us.”

Is any regulatory role for Government unacceptable, whatever the circumstances and the purported checks and balances such as agreement of the Lord President, as the bill requires?

“It’s early days for me to form a final view on that. The Society wants progress; it was the Society that started the whole process. We are not suggesting there is no role, but at this very early stage we have concerns about whether the checks and balances which might be suggested are adequate given the importance of the independence of the legal profession.”

Health check

We turn to the health of the Society itself, given the restricted budget it operated during the pandemic and now the pressures it faces as costs continue to rise. Is that affecting its ability to carry out its role?

“The charges we make to members to fund the Society are lower than many of the other Law Societies that we deal with”, Webster replies. “As with every business, we have an increasing challenge in the face of rising costs, to do all that we want to do with the funds available, and it becomes increasingly important that we plan carefully, and make sure that the profession feels it gets good value and is being properly regulated and represented by the Society. But I think it does a great job. We rely heavily on our volunteers; if we didn’t have the huge help we get from all the volunteers on our committees and elsewhere, I don’t think we could do what we do and we’re hugely grateful for all their support.”

As for the profession as a whole, she admits to having worries. Although most larger firms have managed the challenges of the last few years perhaps better than expected, problems of recruitment and therefore succession, along with the continuing difficulties of the legal aid sector (“People talk of legal aid deserts and I’ve seen that for real”), are making life difficult for many others. 

“I know in the bigger firms, it’s not difficult to attract young solicitors to come and join you, but the salaries that can be offered by the biggest national and international firms at the junior end are just so different to what can be offered by a high street firm, and that problem only gets worse if one takes legal aid into account.”

She knows that large central belt firms are in turn suffering something of a brain drain to London or abroad, though doubts if that affects the law more than comparable professions. “The reality is that that’s always going to be the case. Plenty of my friends and colleagues have spent some time in London in their career. I think what we have to do is make practising law up here as interesting as it can be. I’ve certainly enjoyed my career notwithstanding I’ve never left Scotland. I think there’s a hugely good quality of work to be had here. Unlike those living in London I’m sitting here in my study looking out over the whole of West Lothian with fantastic views, and for those interested in outdoor sports and activities Scotland is such a wonderful place to live. Yes, you may have a good salary in London, but it doesn’t follow that you have any time to spend it. So there are pros and cons and we just need to remember that we have a fantastic country here and a fantastic opportunity for those who want to work here.”

Agenda for change

A trained mediator and practising arbitrator, Webster is also a believer in finding different solutions for clients, particularly alternatives to the crippling costs of litigation. “We have to find other ways for our clients. I’m an enthusiastic ambassador for the Scottish Arbitration Centre; I’m passionate about that and other forms of what we’re no longer calling alternative dispute resolution but effective dispute resolution. How far do we have to go to try and find new ways to solve disputes? Online systems have pros and cons. There’s no one answer for everything.”

There’s so much Webster would like to do, that “Diane [McGiffen, chief executive] is spending time at the moment saying ‘You’re not going to be able to fix everything in one year. You will have to focus on the things that are most important to you’, and that’s what I’ll be trying to do.”

If you don’t already know Sheila Webster, there’s a good chance that will change over the coming year.

“I’m not from a legal family, but I came from a background where my parents encouraged me to be the best I could be.”

Raised and educated in Aberdeen but having spent her working life in Edinburgh, Sheila Webster and her husband, a KC (also from the north) have twin daughters now of student age, not in law, to whom most of her time out of work has until now been devoted. The family enjoys travelling together and Webster is “thrilled” at the fact that her daughters have been looking at educational opportunities abroad – one is to spend a semester at the University of Vermont.

“I just think these opportunities are out there for people to go and experience. What I try to say to the trainees that I interview, that we recruit, is take what opportunities are out there. Life isn’t going to come to a shuddering halt if you’re six months later in doing something because you went and did something interesting, and you’ll probably have a wider mind and a more open mind if you go and do these things, so I love seeing people go and do things like that.”

That reflects her top tip for anyone starting in the law today, speaking as someone who ended up doing something completely different from what she wanted when she set out: “Be flexible. If you open your eyes and look around, there are huge opportunities.”