President's column

One of the joys of being President is that you never know what’s next. Sure, there is a lot of routine – Council meetings, briefings in Drumsheugh Gardens, meetings with stakeholders such as the large law firms, faculty visits to Wick/Castle Douglas/Cupar. And lots of dinners. That last may sound cushy, but you have to go and be Mr Law Society of Scotland, take pot luck with whom you are put beside, and listen to many speeches, of a quality best described as… mixed.

Indeed the dinners are a nuisance to me, being of the physically chunky persuasion. The last thing I need, frankly, is a raspberry coulis with toffee sauce. In fact, I am pretty well-disciplined now. I usually take the car, and follow Her Majesty’s example – don’t have the roll, don’t take dessert, refuse cheese, and only drink water.

Anyway, occasionally you find yourself in novel situations. At one recent dinner one of my table companions was representing the South Korean legal profession. Without boring you with the reasons, I taught her some Glaswegian phrases which she then tried on her Scottish colleagues back in Seoul, and emailed me to report her success.

But to our tale. Another recent event was at Society HQ on 19 October – a SWAN networking event. SWAN, founded in 2008 by Ian Arnot and Robert Cole from BT, was a network for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) employees, but has grown to bring in folk from all sorts of companies and organisations. It aims to help members network, and to provide support and enablement to LGBTs.

The Society’s involvement arises from our Profile of the Profession in 2006, bullying research in 2010, and a specific survey of bullying in the legal workplace. The stats show that the experience of LGBT members is generally good, but you are two to three times more likely to be bullied if gay; the biggest pressure is around getting traineeships and first jobs; and lesbians seem to face the most issues in terms of pay, progression and bullying. Substantial interest was shown in a legal LGBT networking group, but there has been a lack of critical mass in any one location to get this moving. Given the Society’s equality strategy we continue to be open to supporting a member-led group.

Experiences

So, to assist that process, the SWAN event was arranged. After initial coffee and meeting/greeting, I spoke as President (noting with gentle irony that while the Society is enthusiastic to promote and support diversity, the event host was a white, middle-aged, heterosexual man). Neil Stevenson as Director of Representation and Professional Support spoke of the Society’s research, but also his experience and reflection as an out gay man working in the Society and in Scotland; but the main speaker was Dan Fitz, BT’s group general counsel, who has held a range of high-value and high-profile corporate posts. He spoke of his experiences as a gay man working in the UK and US.

This opened up into a general Q & A/debate, and we examined issues of coming out, bullying and relationships within the workplace, and the difficulty of working in some countries where homosexuality is either outlawed or a definite obstruction to success.

I learned a great deal, including that “coming out” is not necessarily a single earth-shattering event in the life of a gay person. Each encounter with, say, a new colleague, a company of co-professionals at a dinner or seminar, a social gathering involving people one has not met before, even meeting a new client, may involve some level of explanation of one’s situation even if just to avoid confusion or embarrassment to the other person (e.g. when speaking of “my partner”), and while we are all Jock Tamson’s bairns, some of us inevitably need to be ready to identify ourselves in terms of our sexuality as a matter of routine.

After the debate we repaired to the library for drinks and chat. It was a delight to mingle with the wide variety of folk attending, a number of solicitors among them – indeed, I think we were able to persuade a few to come along and help on committees in the future, and I hope everyone was happy to get some momentum going in terms of LGBT networking within the profession.

Scotland is a sophisticated and modern society, but not perfect. Prejudice and lack of understanding remain, and it is important that we as solicitors form a strong and fair society and profession. After all, as was pointed out, part of the reason that gay men and women are able to claim their place as equals is that lawyers have on occasion gone to the parapet and challenged existing norms, fought the fight for fairness and dignity, and refused to accept an obnoxious status quo. And while this white, middle-aged, heterosexual man was already comfortable leading a diverse profession, I am now even more encouraged that the light of social and sexual justice is pretty bright these days.