Meet our New Council Member, Michael Scutt

helping out with family cases, but seeing clients to give advice under the Green Form Scheme (remember that?), drafting and preparing Wills, residential conveyancing, personal injury, miscellaneous disputes and, usually on the basis that because I had most recently attended Law School, I was the expert on anything unusual which all the other solicitors and partners had since forgotten, or could not be bothered with. Domestic violence applications were seen as a good way of cutting one’s advocacy teeth, although it perhaps suggested that solicitors of the time took domestic violence as seriously as the Police, who would routinely dismiss such situations as “just a domestic”.

Client care was a very different matter in those days! However, I did have my own office and I decided to buy myself a pinstripe suit and thus was clearly a fullyfledged lawyer. I even grew a beard to give myself more gravitas at a time when beards, on men, weren’t as popular as nowadays.

30 Years and counting...

I’m delighted to join the Council and perhaps you may allow me to introduce myself to you? This year also coincides with the 30th anniversary of my qualification and I thought it might be interesting to take a look back at both my journey and how the profession has changed over that time from my perspective.

From university I joined a now defunct firm called Woolley & Weston in Welwyn Garden City, based on Fretherne Road. They practiced from shabby first floor offices and if they looked uninviting to visitors at least clients could not have complained about where their fees were being spent! I joined as an “outdoor clerk” as I had a year to fill before starting my Common Professional Entrance course (now of course the GDL) and thereafter the Law Society Finals. An outdoor clerk is really an archaic name for a paralegal, although in those days I did do a lot more going out of the office, including to Court and doing things such as serving documents. On one occasion I was asked to serve papers in a domestic violence application upon the violent husband of our client. I was told to serve them early in the morning before he had had time to get drunk, in order to avoid any possible trouble. I survived. On another occasion I was asked to serve some papers on a person on the other side of town, get a taxi there and then to walk back afterwards, funds being scarce. Even in those days complaints were made about legal aid rates.

After Law School I re-joined the firm as an “articled clerk” and then remained with them after qualifying in 1993. The training can really be described as of the “sink or swim” variety in that I was given a desk, a telephone and half a secretary and told to get on with it. Guidance was forthcoming only afterwards. There was a huge variety of work to do as well, including not only

Upon qualification I drifted more into contentious work making regular appearances at the local Magistrates courts, lots of personal injury but I was still doing family cases, which I loathed then and still do. One of the particular incidents I remember is, at an approximate age of 24, I found myself advising a man, probably 20 years older than me, whose wife had just walked out on him and the kids. His life was in tatters. He wanted advice on where he stood and what he could do. I sat there and parroted all the usual stuff about the Children Act and various bits of Family Law legislation, but I very much doubt that I gave him any advice, legal or otherwise, worth speaking. How it was that someone of my age and limited life experience could provide any meaningful advice to a married man whose life had just collapsed is beyond me. It wasn’t until a good while later, after I had been a client rather than the advisor, that I realised that empathy is one of the most important skills a solicitor should have.

Gradually, and to my relief, I escaped family work and got sucked into claimant personal injury work. At the time the firm was on the panel of a well-known Legal Expense Insurer. We received large numbers of RTAs each month and we were good at dealing with them, advising the clients and getting good outcomes. I dealt with bent metal cases as well as lots of personal injuries, some of them quite serious. The small claim limit had been £500.00 and then was increased to £1,000.00. Third party insurers would usually pay our costs even if the claim fell below the small claims limit. They quickly wised up to that and that then stopped. Also, every month someone from one of the big third-party insurers would come to the office and negotiate settlement on the cases with us face to face.

Then, overnight, the insurer axed 98% of its panel and centralised all its work amongst three or four much larger law firms. Overnight a huge amount of our work disappeared, and it was probably the death knell for the firm.

I also used to do a lot of criminal work and was a frequent attender at all the local magistrates courts, most of which have been rationalised. I also used to visit clients in police stations and found it a very exciting type of work to do and enjoyed it. However, as we all know crime doesn’t pay and getting called out at odd hours of the day and night soon lost its glamour for me.

Then, in 1998 Woolley & Weston was swallowed up by Taylor Walton and I found myself in their flashy glass and steel office in Luton, next to the Old County Court building running off my personal injury files. It was clear there was never going to be enough work to go around in the department and also with personal matters in mind, including moving with my wife down to the South Coast, I left Taylor Walton and got a job with a well-known national personal injury factory farm.

That was a very interesting experience, having gone from a small high street practise with about eight partners in Welwyn Garden City, then to a significant larger firm with Taylor Walton but this latest firm was of a completely different size altogether. This was also around the time that computers were making in-roads into the way work was processed. At Woolley & Weston we had not had word processors or email (it was just about available in those days) and now I had my first experience of case management systems. By modern standards the system was fairly clunky but it seemed the height of sophistication in those days. It was still one fee earner to one secretary though. The work came in in a steady torrent and in their technical claims department my job was to process either more complex cases or, more likely, those cases where the clients were not prepared or not able to cope with being the raw ingredients in a sausage machine processing their whiplash claims. The only way to get difficult claims or difficult clients moving was, and is, to sit down in front of them. Although Teams and Zoom can provide an alternative, it is not ideal in complex situations, let alone court hearings.

It was not for long term and I was lucky enough to find a job with a niche employee law firm in the City doing claimant employment law with a sole practitioner. This was a complete change of scenery and was about as far removed from the factory firm as it is possible to imagine. It was also much more to my liking.

We were based in Lombard Street, and the work was highly specialised – as 85% of our clients were in the financial services sector and our clients were usually not only very well-heeled but highly intelligent and assertive. There was never any shortage of clients with deep pockets prepared to litigate and I spent a fulfilling and challenging 11 years there.

I decided to move on after that time as I became jaded with the commute and fancied a change of scene and joined Crane & Staples as their Head of Litigation in 2013 where I have remained since becoming a Partner in 2016 running a team practising mainly landlord and tenant, contentious probate and employment

At my London firm although we had PCs and email, the systems were basic. At Woolley & Weston non-existent. At Crane & Staples things are completely different. We have modern all singing all dancing case management systems and the firm is at the cutting edge of modern legal practise. In addition, there is a very supportive atmosphere for all staff and it is a pleasure to work with the other partners and colleagues. By a quirk of fate the office is only about 100 metres up the road from the old Woolley & Weston premises, which have now been turned into flats.

Over the course of 30 years my career geographically has moved 100m down the road. What has moved on far further is how law is practised, how it is funded and what clients expect from us. As we all know, the court system has continued to deteriorate: at least in the 90s it was possible to telephone your local county court and speak to someone who sounded like they knew what was going on Nowadays, phoning Salford in the hope that the “system” will actually reveal what happened to the application submitted or whether the hearing listed for months is actually going to take place seems a very retrograde step.

What has also moved on enormously is the training we provide to our trainees: the days of sink or swim are long-gone and we pride ourselves upon giving all our trainees a very thorough grounding and education in all the areas in which we practise. A focus on specialisation and getting a thorough grounding in a small number of areas of law is so much better.

I do not suppose I will be writing another article to mark the 60th anniversary of me qualifying and I very much hope I will not. However, I should say that the last 30 years have given me a solid and rewarding career in all respects. I do not regret the career choices I made back in 1989. Long live the high street law practice!

Michael Scutt Council Member 2023