Fiona Pask

Only, the Law Society of Scotland had other plans. The society is responsible for creating the regulatory framework that will make licensed legal service providers (LLSPs) – the Scottish term for alternative business structures – a reality, but in September announced it was putting that process on hold until 2027 at the earliest. It was, Pask says, a major blow.

“We were really disappointed by the Law Society’s announcement,” she notes. “It was 2010 that this was first mooted and they [the Law Society] had said they were holding off for the new legislation. That came in and, foolishly, we were expecting them to roll out the rules and regulatory framework that had been anticipated for more than 10 years. When we got the announcement about the further delay that really did come as a kick in the teeth.”

When it made its announcement about delaying work on LLSPs, the Law Society said it had chosen instead to focus on overhauling the complaints system – another key area addressed by the legislation – because it had felt there was little interest from Scottish firms in taking advantage of the ABS mechanism. “While we remain committed to getting that system of regulation up and running in the medium term, the limited number of firms expressing an interest makes it right for us to focus our resources initially on where we know we can make the biggest difference,” David Gordon, convener of the society’s Regulatory Committee said.

However, Pask says that “to the best of my knowledge” her firm was “never approached” and so was never able to express its interest in the change. The fact the Law Society has chosen to put it on a backburner is, she adds, “interfering with us being able to provide clients with the best service”. In England, Shakespeare Martineau is one of several businesses that operate under the Ampa umbrella and benefit from the economies to be gained by sharing infrastructure costs. Law firms Corclaim, Lime Solicitors and Mayo Wynne Baxter are all part of the Ampa stable but, because it also contains a firm of surveyors and a cyber-security business, the Scottish firm can neither be integrated with nor mirror the activities of the wider group.

“Clients are getting the best service from us, but in terms of the market it makes it more expensive to operate and more clunky,” she explains. “We’re not passing that on to our clients but it’s definitely felt internally and it’s a prejudice to us being able to compete, which, overall, impacts on services.

“A lot of work needs to be done in the background to make sure we are regulatory complaint. I don’t want to be negative about the Law Society, there are people there who do an excellent job and it’s important that complaints get dealt with. But surely, when we’ve known that this was on the cards, there’s something inherently wrong that we don’t know what it’s going to look like and how it will operate in Scotland.

“The Law Society is behind on alternative business structures and that impacts on how we operate as lawyers and as a business. We’re not going to curb our plans because of this but it does mean the opportunities have to be approached differently or we have to look at alternative opportunities.”

For Pask it is a niggle that is blighting what has otherwise been a positive journey at Shakespeare Martineau.
Having grown up in the borders village of Coldingham, Pask says she ended up studying law because an “amazing guidance teacher” helped her secure work experience in Balfour & Manson’s Edinburgh HQ. Being there, shadowing a trainee over several days in the Court of Session and Sheriff Court, was, she says, “hugely glamorous”. Yet, while it solidified her resolve to go into the law, getting there was ultimately harder than she had expected.

“I found it really difficult to get a traineeship,” she says. “I left university in 2005 and qualified in 2008. It wasn’t that there weren’t traineeships out there, it’s just that I wasn’t getting them. I applied for about 50 but I didn’t have one when I went to do my diploma.

“When I finished the diploma I worked for a year as a research assistant at the Glasgow Graduate School of Law. I had exposure to all different areas of the law and had a lot of interaction with lawyers. Towards the end of the year I got a traineeship with the personal injury firm Corries. I think it was because I’d done tutoring on a personal injury project.”

On qualifying, Pask moved to Harper Macleod, joining the firm’s Glasgow personal injury disputes team, where she remained for five years.

“I got to the end of my contentedness with that and wanted a change,” she says. “I was potentially going to go to another firm when a job came up in the Edinburgh contentious team. The person who runs that team is a very good friend of mine now, but I don’t think he really wanted me because I didn’t have a lot of commercial contracts experience at that time. He was made to take me by management, but it was brilliant.”

Having made partner in that team in 2016, Pask made the reluctant decision to leave the firm in 2023, choosing to join Shakespeare Martineau to help build out the nascent team there. Though the firm had launched in Scotland in 2020, when it took a Dentons lawyer to spearhead the office, its focus initially had been on property. Bringing Pask on board meant it was able to expand into disputes.

“I’d really carved out my role at Harper Macleod but the head of department is not much older than me and so would have remained the head of department for a really long time,” she says. “I was a very valued partner in that team but it was never going to be my team or my own thing. Covid really made people reflect, and I realised didn’t want to be comfortable or safe about my role, and I felt I wasn’t growing at the same rate as I had been previously.”

Pask says that being approached about a position at another firm gave her “itchy feet” and, when the same recruiter put the Shakespeare Martineau job in front of her, her interest was piqued.

“They said they had this opportunity to start a disputes team up here – it was a blank canvas,” she says. “It was like being in a start-up but with the support of a comprehensive English firm behind us. Disputes lawyers tend to be a distressed purchase – I wasn’t offering to bring X thousands of pounds’ worth of clients with me, but I had relationships and a bit of a reputation and it was useful and comforting to think that they also had clients that needed servicing. I wasn’t coming in to a completely empty desk.”

Two years on and the disputes team now numbers four people, with Pask saying she’s trying to build it out by taking on a new person every six months. “That’s the sweet spot to make sure people have enough work and I have the right resource,” she says. She’s hoping to bring a senior associate on board soon and a trainee will qualify into the department next year. In the meantime, although she spends around half her time in the practice, she is also throwing herself into running the Scottish part of the firm.

“The partner that started the Scottish practice was based in Birmingham and when she decided to leave we started looking at the practicality of someone leading the team from south of the border,” Pask says. “She did an excellent job but as we became bigger it became necessary and sensible to have someone based here and I was asked to do it. I had taken on a quasi-leadership role by physically being here. We’ve been creating an environment people want to work in and we no longer struggle to get people into the office.

“What I’ve learned that I didn’t know before is that you’re a leader whether you’ve got the badge saying you’re a leader or not. Years ago, a partner was coming back to Harper Macleod from maternity leave and someone said to her to look at how I manage it to see how to settle back in. I didn’t know that until years later, but it made me think how everybody in the profession is an example to everybody else.”