Douglas Mill: Bonfire of the vanities

In his regular SLN column, former Law Society of Scotland chief executive Douglas Mill considers this weekend’s sad demise of Pagan Osborne and gives his personal view.

So, it finally happened. Scotland’s longest, slowest, most inevitable legal train crash finally hit the buffers at the weekend. Pagan Osborne eventually found that, like RBS and Glasgow Rangers, defying financial gravity ultimately ends in tears.

‘The word on the pavey’, to quote a Dundee solicitor pal is about £2m. Yes, that’s £2,000,000.

I have aired my views on solicitor insolvencies before – most recently in the case of Hamilton Burns. Pagans have been so terminal for so long that there is almost a boredom factor at play. I know of a good few solicitors, who, for various reasons have been keeping an eye on the annual accounts PO required to lodge.

But, the unprecedented number of texts and e-mails I have had about the situation over the last three to four weeks, all expressing a degree of mixed relief and outrage, means it would be remiss of me not to comment.

Because this is a bad one. A real bad one. A real high profile bad one.

Not only does it raise the total of financial default by Scottish solicitors, (well over £10m in the last few years), but it is another unfortunate reminder to good old Civic Scotland (whatever that actually is) that solicitors cannot be guaranteed to be solvent when clients engage them.

And that, for a profession which rightly, for decades, considered itself, men of business and pillars of the community is an outright, total disgrace. What, in fact, my gran would have categorised as, a Black Burning Disgrace.

Because if many of the people who have contacted me about PO had actually had the backbone to speak out at certain stages, the widespread collateral damage this Jacobean farce will cause would not be so considerable.

Because PO is not just another pathetic basket case. It is, or I must learn to say, was, the smallest high profile firm in Scotland. A firm which, in the person of its CEO, Alistair Morris, (not managing partner, mind), belied its modest Fife firm actuality to tell High Street lawyers how to run their businesses – in the Journal and at LSS seminars.

Well, ironic or what?

The reputational damage to the profession is made all the worse by the fact that Mr Morris was co-opted to sit as the Law Society president.

And if the Scottish profession did not notice, then other jurisdictions certainly did. And it did not show us in a good light.

Because this is not really about the others in PO. The other partners whose shirts are presumably lost deserve at least a modicum of sympathy. Likewise, the poor staff, many of whom (as always happens in these cases, when lifeboats are launched) will be out a job. And it’s not about the trainees, assistants or associates, many of whom will hopefully be absorbed by Thorntons. Nor the clients, who Thorntons will look after well, as they are a well-managed outfit, ideally placed to undertake such a Herculean labour. My concern, and it has to be said, is about Mr Morris.

Someone has to say that it is, at best, very, very questionable that he continues to sit on the Judicial Appointments Board. And indeed, a couple of their recent appointments have raised eyebrows.

And someone has to say that it is very, very, very questionable that he sits, as the profession’s representative on the current Government Review of Legal Services. Part of whose remit may be solvency testing for the profession.

Someone has to say that. Someone has to say that a modest firm trading with a deficit at that level for so long is not on.

Someone has to say these things. But do you know what? We’re all too cowardly to do so. And that’s how these things happen.

Oh Brave New World That Has Such People In It.