This month’s Member Spotlight features WS Society trustee and partner at Kippin Campbell, Robert Macduff-Duncan WS, who tells us about his career highlights, and sheds light on how the WS has played a role in his career and the many member benefits of joining the WS Society.
1. What/who made you consider law as a career?
I honestly do not know! My parents divorced not long before I started secondary school, and I remember being fascinated by the agreements, title deeds, wills and so forth which were to be found at home at that time. I think that sparked an interest. Academically, I have always been interested in history and politics, and guidance teachers thought that law would fit with my particular interests. I won’t pretend that my decision to study law came from a desire to fight injustice, or to become frightfully wealthy and influential, but rather because it appeared to be the path set out for me!
2. What led you to focus on conveyancing and property work?
“Join because engaging in broad cultural pursuits makes one a better lawyer.”
During my traineeship and in the early stages of my career, I was something of a general practitioner, covering everything from criminal advocacy in Sheriff Court, to Personal Injury work, to Wills, and Residential Conveyancing. Not long after I completed my traineeship, two colleagues moved on to another firm, and I inherited their fairly substantial conveyancing workload, and the rest is history. I continued with that firm for further twelve or thirteen years with a mixed bag workload, but since I moved to my present firm six years ago, I have solely focussed on property work.
I have always had an interest in property, and property law, though, which I think is linked in part to my interest in history. I studied History at university alongside law, and took an honours course led by a Professor of Architectural History on the development of Scotland’s burghs in the eighteenth century, which kickstarted an interest in town planning, architecture and the urban physical environment. I am also interested in patterns of landownership – the rise of the mercantile elite to the status of laird in the eighteenth century, the huge changes in landownership after the First World War, and the vast increase in owner occupation of individual dwellings in the late twentieth century. All of those major shifts were led by economics, and perhaps assists us in trying to assess what the twenty first century might hold.
I am interested in property in both urban and rural settings. My undergraduate dissertation was on the evolution of crofting law and what is now the Crofting Community Right to Buy, which was just at White Paper stage at that time. I grew up in the North of Scotland and my grandparents owned a farm on the Black Isle. My Grandfather was an NFU rep and was an agricultural adviser to Highlands and Islands Enterprise in its early days, when he authored a report on the importance of agriculture (whether on farms or on crofts, and whether carried out by those who owned the land or tenanted it) to the economy of the Highlands. Of course, there is a huge social and cultural aspect to land, its use, and its ownership, which is perhaps heightened in that rural context.
I spent a useful summer during my student days working in a local authority housing office, which reinforced in my mind just how fundamental it is to have a secure, safe home, and the role played by social housing in giving the best start in life to millions of people. Land is political, land is social, and land is economic, and land law touches on each of those strands. I acted for a social landlord at one time, and whilst occasionally I obtained decree for recovery of possession, much of the time I was explaining to the Court the support being provided to avoid eviction. I enjoyed acting for that Housing Association in the acquisition of new sites for regeneration here in Perth, and making my own small mark on the physical appearance of the city.
So much has been written on the importance of Place culturally. The places in which we choose to live and work have such importance as the background scenery of our lives, and it is a privilege to assist people purchase and sell property, or resolve property disputes. Ignoring the big themes, our homes are so important to our identities. Helping individuals buy their first flat, or move up to the home in which they will raise their family, or downsize in later life, is a huge privilege. Conveyancing is about people and place, and both are endlessly fascinating.
3. Please tell us about some highlights of your career to date?
I enjoyed moments in the Sheriff Court – securing a family home which was subject to an action for recovery by the Accountant in Bankruptcy, and allowing three generations of the same family time to resolve matters themselves; instructing counsel in a (subsequently reported) case about financial provision on death, and whether heritable property outside Scotland can be dealt with by the Scottish courts (the courts ultimately decided that the deceased’s co-habitant had no claim to heritable property in Ireland, preserving the property for the deceased’s children from his marriage by whom I was instructed); and securing a large settlement in a personal injury action for a farm worker injured in a road accident during harvest. The accident left him unable to work and he required to vacate his tied housing. The settlement was large enough to buy him and his wife a home and live comfortably.
There have been standout conveyances too – a lighthouse, a castle with an iconic lodge built on top of a bridge, and properties where the “other side” have been well-known personalities.
4. In what way has the WS Society played a role in your career?
I trained at a WS firm – three of the four partners were WS. The senior partner had served a WS apprenticeship with a firm in Leith in the 1970s, and served on Council in the middle 2000s. I was therefore encouraged to complete my Professional Competence Course at the WS, which gave me the opportunity to spend a fortnight roaming around the Signet Library! My boss was on Council when affiliate membership for trainees and NQs was first introduced, and I was one of the first AffWS’s in around 2007, before taking full membership a couple of years later. Since then, quite frankly, I have simply turned up to the Crofting Law Conference, the Charity Law Conference and one or two other functions. I have only been to the dinner once!
5. You recently became a trustee of the WS Society, please tell us about this decision?
I have always been proud to be a WS. My Granny started her working life in a bank, but when she married my grandad, who worked in the same bank, she found herself looking for new challenges. She took a job typing up the memoir of a local farmer and county councillor called Joseph Budge. Joe had a CBE for services to agriculture and an MC for acts of bravery during the First World War. But, Granny claimed, the postnominals Joe valued above all others were WS, as he had served a WS apprenticeship with Morton, Smart, Milligan and Prosser before going to War. So, when Robert Pirrie asked me to consider allowing myself to be nominated, Granny was in my thoughts, as were some illustrious WS ancestors of the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Most of all, though, I thought what an enormous privilege, and responsibility, it would be to be one of those charged with looking after this very special institution, its stunning home and its internationally renowned collections. Who could turn down such an invitation?
6. What would you say to any lawyer considering WS membership?
As a constituent part of the College of Justice, as an organisation which has been on the go for five, six, seven hundred years, and has boasted so many illustrious names from the solicitor branch of the profession amongst its membership, it continues to live its values of “excellence, permanence and integrity”. Join for the excellent CPD, the ability to visit and make use of the library, to socialise with likeminded people in the Special Interest Groups, or attend the magnificent dinner. Join because of a regard for history, or because being a WS marks you out as being of a particularly independent mind in a profession of independent minded people. Join because engaging in broad cultural pursuits makes one a better lawyer. This is not an original thought: none other than Robert Pirrie once said that an engagement with history, continuity and Scottish legal heritage is important and makes you a more interesting, better, lawyer. I read that interview with Robert and it articulated my own thoughts about the WS Society so clearly. The Society really is special.