Ross Harper Solicitors, which was set up in the 1960s, ceased trading earlier this week after the decision was made by its interim Judicial Factor. Past employees of the firm include former First Minister Donald Dewar and our own Austin Lafferty. Austin's interviews on STV News, BBC Radio and Radio Clyde can be found below:-
Austin on STV News
"Where firms fail solicitors pay into a Guarantee Fund and if there is any money that is owing to clients that can't be found within the firm then the Solicitors Guarantee Fund will pay out compensation to match that and this is something solicitors have done for many, many years and that money is safe and it's kept for clients who have suffered a loss."
Austin on Radio Clyde
"Sorry for the clients, for the employees and the partners of the firm. I used to work for Ross Harper for four very happy years in the 1980s, it was my first qualified job. Professor Harper, who had started the firm, was very innovative and rather than having a big office in the city centre he put branches in High Streets, places where people actually lived, so you could go to your local solicitor and the brand was very big."
Austin on BBC Radio
MHAIRI STUART
Now, clients of one of Scotland's best known law firms have been reassured that funds lodged with the firm are safe. Ross Harper Solicitors ceased trading yesterday and although clients are protected under the Law Society's Guarantee Fund employees and suppliers will have to apply as creditors for any money they're owed. I'm joined now by the solicitor and broadcaster Austin Lafferty. Austin, you used to work at Ross Harper.
AUSTIN LAFFERTY, Solicitor and Broadcaster
Yes, I had four years there in the '80s, it was one of my first qualified jobs, a very happy time there as a young solicitor. We were very busy in the criminal courts, I had a lot of fantastic colleagues and every day was an adventure and I've just got very happy memories of being at Ross Harper and Murphy, as it was called then.
MHAIRI STUART
Yes, it was a very prestigious company to work for, wasn't it?
AUSTIN LAFFERTY
It was, it was quite an innovative firm in that it targeted the high streets and although people think of it as criminal legal aid, and so forth, it had a very large civil practice and also a very large private practice, I learned my conveyancing there, and what they did rather than having one big firm in an office black in the centre of town it was lots of branches, very visibly badged up with a brand in various places around Glasgow and Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire and all sorts of places.
MHAIRI STUART
Yes, certainly, it's one of the first companies I can remember actually advertising for business.
AUSTIN LAFFERTY
That's right, it was a brand and if you go out and ask people to name lawyers and name legal companies then Ross Harper will be one of the fist names they think of, but behind that there was an awful lot of ordinary legal work done well, so it wasn't just a sort of flash in the pan kind of thing, it was a very substantial legal firm.
JOHN BEATTIE
What's gone wrong, Austin?
AUSTIN LAFFERTY
Well, there is the Judicial Factor in place and in my capacity as Vice President of the Law Society of Scotland I've some awareness of what work is being done there - it's a legal matter, almost a matter of almost judiciary, I think might be the phrase, so we'll not talk about that in detail. I think it's fair to say that law firms in general have struggled with other businesses in meeting the economic downturn. If there are fewer houses being sold then there's less in the way of legal fees coming in and if there's less commercial work going on, if commercial companies are drawing in their horns then there's less in the way of commercial leases or buying out other companies and so forth, so there's been a general pressure on the legal profession and the legal profession has had to adapt to that by in some cases cutting overheads, in other cases funding new markets or retaining to do work that the particular firms perhaps hadn't done before, so that's a general statement - as I say, I don't want to talk about Ross Harper in particular but there's no doubt that the legal market has changed hugely.
MHAIRI STUART
How much of it...I mean I know you said a lot of work went on, but how much of it was a one man band, in a way, with Ross Harper at its head - quite a high profile guy, obviously he's now retired - how big a factor could that have been?
AUSTIN LAFFERTY
I actually don't think it was a particular factor. Ross was absolutely brilliant in the way he set up the business. He would be the first person to tell you his strength was not as a solicitor, although he was a very good solicitor, his strength was in understanding how to move forward with changing the face of the legal profession - even away back 20, 30 years ago...in fact when I started doing work on radio there were some people, the high-heid yins of the legal profession, who were against that, they thought it was dragging the profession into the dirt, which I probably have done in other ways, but Ross was the person...he was the President of the Law Society at that time, he said "this is the future, the legal profession has to go out, it can't sit there in its ivory tower and wait for people to come in, we must go out and get business."
JOHN BEATTIE
And maybe that's what the firm didn't do...you know, if you look at the big successful firms, they've diversified, they've become corporate law, they've done a bit of local authority law, they've tied in...a bit of Legal Aid work. Ross Harper always seemed to be criminal law and conveyancing and those two markets didn't really expand the way the others did.
AUSTIN LAFFERTY
Again speaking generally, a lot of firms...it's like the swan swimming along, there's a lot of paddling done underneath and firms like Ross Harper do a lot of matrimonial work, wills and executories, powers of attorney, commercial contracts, civil litigation - all that work is not a prominent as the conveyancing and the criminal work might be but it was all being done there. I think that, to widen it out, firms that relied on a certain set of income streams both the fees themselves might have gone down but also the availability of work has gone down. Now, whether that was one of the causing factors of the Ross Harper collapse - that I don't know, I can't tell you that, but I do know from speaking to lots of other solicitors that solicitors have had to reorganise themselves and look at things like marketing, that lawyers were never really involved with, I mean today is also the day when there's a huge change - the firm of McGrigors is amalgamating with the Pinsent Masons. Now, that's a gigantic operation for both of those firms and hopefully it will be to the great credit of the legal profession in Scotland. The legal profession is dynamic, lawyers perhaps don't like change individually but it stares them in the face they must look for new ways of doing things and that's what we're trying to do.
MHAIRI STUART
Austin Lafferty, thank you.
JOHN BEATTIE
Austin, thank you.