The Right Honorable Lady Dorrian

The Right Honorable

Lady Dorrian

Career of Lady Justice Dorrian: Lord Justice Clerk and President of the Second Division of the Court of Session

1981 admitted as an Advocate

1988 appointed as an Advocate Depute

1994 appointed as Queen’s Counsel

2002 appointed as Temporary Judge in the High Court

2005 appointed full-time Judge to the Supreme Court of Scotland

2016 appointed Lord Justice Clerk

Lady Dorrian talks to Tilly Rubens about her career from being called to the Bar to becoming one of the most senior judges in Scotland. She is the first woman to be appointed as Lord Justice Clerk and President of the Second Division of the Inner House of the Court of Sessions.

A career in law was entirely unchartered territory for the young Leeona Dorrian as nobody in her family had any previous connection with the legal profession. Her father had started life at sea before working in the docks and becoming a sales executive. Her mother, with a background in bookkeeping, managed a casino in Edinburgh. Although she was educated at “quite an academic” private girl’s school in Edinburgh, Lady Dorrian says there was no dedicated careers teacher and the girls were only given fairly rudimentary information about possible career choices.

Fortunately, Lady Dorrian read in her teenage years that law involved skills of logic and articulacy and “as I was good at maths”, she says she liked the idea of becoming a lawyer!

The Law School at Aberdeen University had a good reputation and so she decided to apply and was accepted. She very much enjoyed her time at Aberdeen but had no idea about what area of law she wanted to enter when she left university except that “I wanted to go to the bar”.

Qualification as advocate

Advocates in Scotland perform similar roles as barristers in England and Wales but undergo a different training process

to their English cousins. They will do a period of training with a solicitor’s firm before undertaking their devilling training for the bar. Devilling involves shadowing a practising advocate and helping them prepare briefs and cases for court by carrying out research and looking at legal precedents.

As Lady Dorrian was still quite young when she finished her legal studies at university, she decided to qualify first as a solicitor by doing a two year apprenticeship (the equivalent of a training contract) followed by a post-qualifying year as a solicitor. Her advocate’s legal training was completed by undertaking ten months of devilling and she was admitted in 1981, aged just 24, to the Faculty of Advocates.

“I was called with two other women which brought the total number of women at the Bar to 11 out of 150 at the time,” she recalls. Although Lady Dorrian says she was lucky not to experience much sexism herself, it certainly existed. She says: “Women experienced it badly and I think a lot of it was implicit. The court clerk, the advocate’s clerk, the advocate depute and the judge were all men and so there was this assumption that all advocates would be men!”

There was an incident she remembers in 1985 when a complaint was made about the standard of dress of the female advocates by one of the older judges. He complained that a female advocate had appeared in court showing too much décolletage. When all the women advocates received a letter from the Dean referencing this isolated complaint, Lady Dorrian said she and her colleagues were so furious that they decided to march on the Dean’s officer en masse!

‘there was this assumption that all advocates would be men’

The Dean fortunately saw the funny side of it and also apologised, particularly as all the women advocates that day were impeccably dressed in the most demure outfits with high neck shirts, scarfs and long skirts. In fact, the Dean was so amused by the incident that he said it was a shame that no one had a camera. Fortunately one of the women present did and “took a photograph to show how well dressed we were.’’

The majority of criminal and civil cases in Scotland are heard in the Sheriff Courts although the most serious criminal offences, such as murder and rape, are dealt with by the High Court. When she was first admitted as an advocate, Lady Dorrian had a mixed civil and criminal practise.

Advocate Depute

Just over seven years later, she was appointed by the Lord Advocate to become an advocate depute. As one of only 12 advocates, and the first woman appointed, this was a “significant commission” for her.

An advocate depute plays a key role in Scotland’s public prosecution service and decides what cases are marked for prosecution at a high level. If the case is serious enough to be tried in the High Court, then the depute will prosecute the case themselves. Lady Dorrian says she recalls one case where she was prosecuting the murder of a woman who had fallen on hard times. She had become an alcoholic and left her family to live with another man who had then killed her and mutilated her body.

When Lady Dorrian came out of court, after the trial, she was stopped by two people who were the ex-husband and another family member of the woman who had been killed. She says: “Despite the horror of the case, they had still come to court to see what had happened and despite all this suffering, expressed their gratitude as to the care I had taken over conducting the case. It is a memory that sticks.”

Queen’s Counsel

Lady Dorrian was then appointed Queen’s Counsel, one of only five women QCs in Scotland in 1994. This was followed in 2002 by being appointed as a temporary judge in the High Court and Court of Session, a role which she sometimes found frustrating. She says: “You are only a resource and not part of the judiciary. There was no input as to how things operated or could be changed.”

Full-time Judge to the Supreme court

Lady Dorrian was then appointed Queen’s Counsel, one of only However in 2005, she was appointed as a full-time judge to the Supreme Court which meant she now could have a say in reforming and improving the judicial system. She says: “I think a lot of the modernisation of the system has come from the judiciary and reforms have been pushed through and driven by the judiciary, particularly in the last ten years.”

One area in particular has been in relation to improving how criminal cases involving vulnerable witnesses are dealt with and complainants treated in court. Lady Dorrian says that she and her judicial colleagues looked carefully at what was happening

one of only five women QCs in Scotland in 1994

in the criminal justice system and realised that complainants (mostly women and children) were giving live evidence in court a long time after the alleged offence took place.

“We reviewed the procedure and realised the benefit of capturing the evidence on film by recording testimony as early as possible after the alleged crime had taken place which had a lot of benefits. The complainant’s recollection was more accurate and stronger and significantly they would be done with the trial at a much earlier stage because their evidence would be captured and then used at the trial.”

She says that Scottish judges are fortunate in being able to introduce changes in the vast number of cases without legislation and so they can react quite quickly when needed. This resulted in changes to encourage the advance recording of evidence, which eventually led to a change in the legislation by the Scottish parliament which meant that all cases involving children must have their evidence captured in advance. Now recording testimony will be the default position for all vulnerable witnesses.

Lord Justice Clerk

In 2016, Lady Dorrian was appointed as the Lord Justice Clerk which is the second most senior judicial post in Scotland and she is the first woman ever to be appointed to this role. She has delegated responsibility for running the criminal courts and sits in both the civil and criminal courts. She chairs the Criminal Court Rules Council and has been instrumental in bringing forward proposed reforms of how cases involving sexual offences are dealt with. This includes a wide ranging review called Improving the Management of Sexual offences (final report published in March 2021) and a proposal for a time-limited pilot of judge only trials for rape cases in a specialist court.

The Review Group acknowledged the option of withdrawing sexual offences from the consideration of juries would be controversial and unpopular with many people. However they also felt there were equally compelling arguments to consider trial by judge alone which needed to be examined in much greater depth with research and a pilot scheme. The review looked at the growth in volume and complexity of sexual offending cases, evidence that victims were severely re-traumatised by their experience in the Scottish criminal justice system and the low conviction rates.

Gender parity for female lawyers in Scotland

In terms of whether she thinks things are better now for women lawyers in Scotland, Lady Dorrian says: “I think yes in the sense that the normalising of role models and increasing number of women at the bar has an impact on thoughts of attainability. At the same time, listening to what female members of the Bar say now, there are still a number of serious issues that need to be addressed. Scotland has never had a woman appointed to the UK Supreme Court and never had a woman as Lord President”.

The Faculty of Advocates, the professional body to which advocates in Scotland belong, are taking steps to address some of these issues. They have a new scholarship scheme aimed at women and those from disadvantaged backgrounds and a Fair Instruction policy in place. Lady Dorrian says she would still encourage women to enter the profession: “It is a fantastic career and is so wide ranging in the things you can do. You can make a huge impact on people’s lives. There are still challenges to improve the lot of women and you should be a part of that.” ■

Tilly Rubens

Consultant, Russell Cooke

Lady Justice Dorrian