Laura Irvine

Laura Irvine is an example. The data protection and Information laws specialist and head of litigation regulatory law at Davidson Chalmers Stewart lined up with colleagues at the Edinburgh Marathon Festival earlier this month to run a half marathon for Maggie’s, the cancer charity.

“I enjoy running at weekends,” she says, adding somewhat self-deprecatingly: “I’m not sure I’m terribly good but I did a 10k last night and also lift heavy weights which helps me run a little faster than I used to.”

Like Ms Irvine, Davidson Chalmers Stewart is also on the move. Last year it merged with Wright, Johnston & Mackenzie LLP (WJM) giving the firm a headcount of more than 200, including 46 partners working across Glasgow, Edinburgh, Inverness, Dunblane and Aberdeen.

The combined firms will soon be joined by the growing complex personal injury team from Irwin Mitchell Scotland when the three brands are coming together as part of the wider Irwin Mitchell group.

Over her career, Ms Irvine has experienced a range of responsibilities which have included terms as a procurator fiscal depute, then with DLA Piper and BTO Solicitors since her legal education. That began with an LLB at the University of Edinburgh, followed by an MA in Criminology at Keele University and an LLM in Human Rights at the University of Strathclyde.

She explains that as a firm of some 15 partners, Davidson Chalmers Stewart, where she had been managing partner, had been seeking to grow in the marketplace and an alliance with Irwin Mitchell and WJM presented a natural opportunity to become part of a UK-wide entity.

Her traineeship was at a small firm in Livingston that undertook only criminal work. “During that period, I visited several prisons and – believe it or not – Livingston became a hub of human rights challenges.”

Many of these arose in the first years after a devolved Scotland incorporated the Human Rights Act 1998 earlier than the rest of the UK. This allowed human rights challenges, in the form of devolution issues, to be argued in national courts, including challenges to prosecution decisions of the lord advocate.

That interest impelled Ms Irvine to take her master’s degree in human rights and she had also spent an exchange year at Leiden University, following a long tradition of Scots lawyers studying in the Netherlands.

As a procurator fiscal depute, a secondment to the UK government helping Lord Davidson, the then advocate general with devolution issues and dealing with a case heard in the Privy Council in Downing Street gave her a useful insight into the differences, especially in criminal law, between the Scots and English systems.

“The advice you give in both jurisdictions is subtly different and while we use the same language and are closely aligned there are important distinctions in the criminal justice systems,” she says.

The solicitor advocate has since operated across a broad canvas including data protection and privacy law; cyber security; white collar crime; financial crime; health and safety and environmental regulation and retail law.

She has been on the board of the Scottish Business Resilience Centre and a founder member of Protectors of Data Scotland. Her remit is a broad one but Ms Irvine says: “Since I moved into a management role, I’d say 50 per cent of my time is involved in dealing with management issues while I’m also the money laundering reporting officer (MLRO) for the firm.”

She stresses that the firm does more than merely practise law; it aims to understand the client’s business and provide pragmatic legal solutions according to their needs.

Currently on her desk sit a wide range of cases: a regulatory case on its way to the Court of Session, a criminal case in which a client is being prosecuted by a Scottish public body and a corporate transaction involving complex data protection issues. “It’s a wide mix – and of course my role now is to train others to be able to help with all of that,” she says.

Looking forward she adds that there are also the larger resources of Irwin Mitchell from which to draw. “They have specialists, for example, in regulatory work so I’m integrating with them and their data protection team.

“I’m meeting with colleagues from England and working on crossover cases. Of course, it’s also about managing staff who require your guidance – sometimes in an urgent way – but as a manager in a law firm, you’re also aware that your clients quite correctly expect you to provide them with an excellent service.

“In terms of clients, when I’m engaged in a criminal matter, I’m often representing individuals who aren’t used to the criminal justice system and my job is to give them information and reassurance. The nature of my work means that the cases tend to be complex and lengthy.

“However, I now have the ability and resource to provide a higher standard of service than those relying on criminal legal aid would be able to – and that’s not because they aren’t good lawyers; it’s just a different business model.”

Data protection has clearly become a much more important part of legal practice over the past decade as law firms and their clients now handle huge volumes of digital information, much of it sensitive, while government has introduced stricter privacy laws and regulators enforce them more aggressively.

Ms Irvine became particularly interested in that area, she says, with the introduction of GDPR after the UK Data Protection Act in 2018. “It was a piece of legislation that fundamentally impacted every business and in the 18 months before it was introduced my work involved talking to clients in different sectors and learning their business.

“In an increasingly digital age we’re throwing out data in all directions and while social media outlets initially seemed quite friendly, we’re sharing sensitive information which is now being used in uncomfortable ways,” says Ms Irvine.

“Most big tech companies’ business models are based on breaches of data protection laws and we need to be aware of the potential dangers of letting some of these organisations trample over our fundamental rights to privacy.”

Moving into a managerial role has, she says, been both challenging and highly enjoyable. “What I really appreciate is the opportunity to make the firm better for those who work here.

“I’m certainly not close to retirement but I’m keen to pass on what I have learned to the team and undertake more supervision, which leaves me more time on the management and compliance side.

“I’m currently focused on being an MLRO and see data protection for law firms and compliance as vital,” she says.

“That’s very challenging and informs my thinking today – but the law is a changing landscape.”