In-house: Public service – so many paths

Tell us about your career path to date?

I trained at a medium sized firm in Glasgow in the early 1990s, then spent six years at a small firm in Edinburgh, doing civil and criminal litigation/

In 1998, I joined the then Scottish Office. The Solicitors Office was heavily involved in preparation for devolution while also keeping pace with the normal workload.

Following devolution, the Government Legal Service for Scotland (“GLSS”) was formed as a community of lawyers in government in Scotland. Its purpose is to provide shared services to its member offices – essentially around staffing, raising awareness of the roles of lawyers in government, and learning and development – in order to develop and retain rounded, experienced lawyers. The GLSS is a brilliant route into interesting and diverse career opportunities, which furthers that purpose.

And this is how it has panned out for me. Over the years, I have worked for the Scottish Government, UK Government, Scottish Parliament and now Revenue Scotland. I have been seconded to, for instance, the Cabinet Office and worked on diverse subject matters, e.g. restricted patients (as a criminal disposal), free personal care, military bases, insolvency, devolution legislation and litigation, and tax.

I am currently head of the Legal team in Revenue Scotland (“RS”). RS was established in 2015 as Scotland’s tax authority for the devolved taxes – currently land and buildings transaction tax and Scottish landfill tax. I joined just before the first Covid lockdown in 2020. Like just about everyone else, RS had to pivot overnight to providing services wholly digitally, which threw up dozens of novel legal questions to be answered immediately and then revisited frequently against a constantly moving target. While challenging, it was certainly effective in getting me familiar with RS quickly. I’m really proud to say we did not miss a beat, with no interruption of service.

As a young public body, RS has scope to design how it does things, and that holds equally for the legal team. It requires more from us than being technical lawyers.

Looking back, I have found myself working on issues and in places I would never have expected. For instance I have supported the Scottish Government on legislation at the Scottish Parliament and the UK Government at Westminster. Much of this has been around the legislative plumbing needed to make devolution work.

The aspects I really enjoy are proximity to the issues of the day – and the sense of purpose which that instils – and the challenge of finding a path through a messy problem. Beyond that, the most enjoyable thing has been working with and learning from some very wonderful people.

As head of Legal Services, what are your main responsibilities?

There are two dimensions to my role. One is leading and supporting the Legal team in advising clients on both devolved taxes and corporate matters. The other is as a member of the Senior Leadership Team (“SLT”). It was an early decision in RS to have the head of Legal as a member of SLT. It has been valuable to have a legal voice at the SLT table and before the RS board and its subcommittees. It ensures that legal considerations are to the fore in decision making.

It does make me a decision maker and consumer of legal advice as well as an adviser, which potentially gives rise to a conflict or loss of impartiality. In a small public body – RS has around 90 staff – there is no magic solution, other than to be ever alert to this possibility and lean on my legal colleagues to avoid me pronouncing on the rightness of my own view!

What was your main driver for working with the Scottish Government? Why should young lawyers consider a career in the public sector?

The main driver was that it was a doorway into a huge range of posts, subject matters and types of work; and to be involved in changing law where it is not working as it should. It allows people to work to their strengths in that you can find a post best suited to your interests and aptitudes.

There is a natural cycle to a particular post whereby you start off knowing little of the subject, followed by a steep learning curve, then a comfort zone, possibly followed by itchy feet. A career in the GLSS means I can apply for a move when ready for a new challenge.

How does the future look for in-house lawyers? What are the key challenges and opportunities?

I believe the future is good for in-house lawyers. Clients appreciate the value in having lawyers who know their business and organisation well. I find clients do not expect you to know everything, but they do look to their in-house lawyers to help plot the path towards the answers. It’s efficient and allows lawyers to be involved at the pre-decision making stage.

One of the main challenges for in-house lawyers is that they are generally working in a small team, in a multidisciplinary organisation where other teams might dominate. It doesn’t take much to overwhelm a small team – just a “hot” legal issue and some team absence can do it. For that reason I say having a network is vital, so that you have a trusted voice to turn to, whether in or outwith your organisation.

One of the greatest opportunities is to work with colleagues from other professions and cross fertilise skills. As an in-house lawyer, you really get to see under the bonnet of an organisation.

What does success look like for your team, and how do you measure this?

I look at this in two ways. We track numbers which show trends in litigation, pressure points and staffing, and the Legal team reports into the SLT and the RS board.

But beyond these formal measures, it looks like enthusiasm; colleagues speaking up and challenging others; supporting colleagues by sharing knowledge; having a culture where it’s OK to say I could do with some help, or I don’t know the answer; where clients come and speak to us early or tentatively and where we are seen as problem solvers.

Essentially, we are a team of people who can rely on each other.

Lawyers aren’t generally seen as particularly innovative. Would you agree? What have you done in any of your roles that has been innovative or resulted in process improvements?

I don’t agree! However, I can see why that might be said. For most of my career, the organisation I have worked for has been a legal one, staffed mainly by lawyers. Lawyers as a group tend to have similar strengths – analytical, logical, constructing arguments, researching, drafting. They tend to have similar blind spots or not see what other professions bring. That has changed for me in RS, an organisation which comprises a variety of different professions.

One innovative thing I did was to volunteer the Legal team as a case study on how we do knowledge management (“KM”) in RS. I did so because we have a clear need to do KM well in the Legal team. And because our remit is to advise the whole organisation, it was hoped that findings for our team could provide helpful pointers for the rest of RS.

I was nervous, on the basis that our KM system was, let’s say, embryonic. However the findings blew away many of my preconceptions. I had started out thinking of knowledge as a library of legislation, case law, previous advice and so on. However, the review urged us to include knowledge of our clients. In practical terms that meant understanding the FAQs, which processes didn’t work effectively, or spotting the occasions where an exchange of knowledge at an earlier stage would have resulted in a better outcome. A quote which resonated was: “We always know more than we say, and we always say more than we write down.”

The team operates a system of planned check-ins with client teams. Feedback was that clients really valued these interactions because they would hear us expressing doubts or counter arguments. Our reasoning was as valuable as providing the “answer”.

When time is tight, it is tempting to cancel the regular check-ins. However the review has effectively given us permission to continue to put resource into this activity.

There’s a perception that in-house legal teams want to embrace technology but face barriers to doing so. What is your team’s experience of using legal technology? Is AI the future?

I have found a degree of truth in this because there is always an existing IT system and in an in-house environment, legal teams’ needs will generally not be the main driver in their design.

On AI, I’m having to learn at pace. I think our route into AI will be via the legal research services we subscribe to and I’m trying to keep pace with product developments. The issue we would need to be satisfied on is security and use of any data the tech ingests from us.

How have attitudes and working practices in the legal profession changed in the law since you started out?

The fundamentals of the job have not changed: it is still about understanding the client’s needs and providing risk based solutions. The tech has improved, but in turn drives an “always on” culture, which allows for less thinking time. The profession’s demographic has changed and that is a positive.

Covid has been a massive catalyst for change. It freed us from the mindset of, “that’s how we always do it”. It would be a shame if that freeing up of our thinking was lost.

The job has become very much harder because of the pace of change. When I qualified, I could still rely on the editions of textbooks

I had at university being able to provide many of the answers. That couldn’t be said now.

What advice would you give lawyers who want to start a career in-house? What makes a good in-house lawyer?

Do it! And do it early! There is no better role for learning what clients really need from their legal counsel (and it’s not a 10 page essay).

A good in-house lawyer is one who listens more than they speak.

What is your most unusual/amusing work experience?

Dyeing my hair pink during lockdown, on the basis that the video function wasn’t working. But by Monday it was, so I had to turn up at a board meeting with newly pink hair.

And finally… What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?

In response to being new to the GLSS and asking my boss what was the best way to learn the job, she said: “Look around, pick out someone you admire, watch what they do then do the same.” I picked her!

Questions put by Beth Anderson, head of Member Engagement at the Law Society of Scotland.