Katrina Ashbolt

“My mum’s from Glasgow and I thought I’d go there for university but when I visited Aberdeen I fell in love with the campus there,” she says. “I knew when I graduated that Aberdeen wasn’t for me, though. I graduated in 2004 and Aberdeen then was very oil focused – you were either in oil or you weren’t, and it wasn’t for me.

“A big corporate firm wasn’t for me either. I still wanted to do court work and saw an advert for Macleod & MacCallum that said you could spend a year of your training in court. I trained and have spent my entire career with Macleod & MacCallum.”

As it turned out Ashbolt never had her day in court, though. Having started out in the residential conveyancing team, she realised she enjoyed the property side of the business so much that she never left. When the bottom fell out of the residential property market in 2008 she transferred to the commercial team and has been there ever since. Feeling like she is a part of the community, as well as the businesses she works for, is what has kept her there for so long.

“The firm is very much a Highland firm and we work for a real mix of people and businesses right across the region,” she says.

“We’re integrated into the local community and act for a lot of the really big businesses locally. It’s great that they haven’t felt the need to go to the big corporate world. We have second and third generation family businesses and we’re part of the business with them. There’s a real breadth to what we do and the fact that we can keep that local is the main thing that keeps me where I am.”

Recent deals have seen her advise D&E Coaches, a family business that the firm has worked with for decades, on its sale to Highland Council. She also regularly acts for non-profit mid-market rental specialist Highland Housing Alliance, including on a multi-million-pound funding arrangement with Scottish Widows and the Scottish government that secured the tenancies of more than 160 properties across the Highlands for a 25-year period.

“Over the last decade I’ve worked with Highland Housing Alliance developing and fine tuning the mid-market rental process in the area,” she says.

“They are industry leaders in what they are delivering locally and each time we get new tenants a nice new home I’m proud to drive past knowing I helped that by assisting HHA buy the development land. We really ran with and made MMR work for HHA and the area, learning and adapting as we went. They are fabulous clients to work with and we work together so well that we very modestly call ourselves the ‘dream team’.

“It’s really important to me to build long-lasting relationships with my clients. As a firm we really pride ourselves on being part of the local community and love that we are trusted advisers to so many local people or businesses.”

The local market has changed significantly in the two decades since Ashbolt has been with Macleod & MacCallum, with a raft of larger corporate firms setting up shop in Inverness.

“There are so many Central Belt firms in Inverness now,” she says. “When I originally started there was only Harper Macleod and [Aberdeen firm] Ledingham Chalmers. Now there’s Brodies, Wright Johnston & Mackenzie, Thorntons. They clearly see the growth and potential in the area.”

Macleod & MacCallum is big enough that it hasn’t been significantly impacted by the influx, Ashbolt says, but she adds that it has had an impact on the local market.

“There have been occasions when some smaller firms have lost clients or have merged with the larger firms, but we’ve been able to hold our own,” she says. “We have a real niche and are able to provide a wide range of services.”

One challenge that the firm, in common with practically all its clients, faces is being able to attract people to the business, in large part because there is an acute shortage of housing right across the Highlands. It is exacerbating a long-standing problem with being able to encourage younger lawyers to look beyond the Central Belt for a career in the north, but Ashbolt says those that do will find plenty of rewards in the Highlands.

“On the commercial side we’ve always felt that we lose a lot of people to the Central Belt because that’s where most of the universities are,” she says. “But you don’t know what you don’t know and people perhaps don’t realise the quality of the work that you get to do in a smaller firm.

“We do homegrow a lot of people and try to capture the people that want to come back to this area, but it can be a challenge to keep them because when they are well trained they are attractive to competitors. But you get a great work-life balance up here – everything is on your doorstep.”