8th August, 2006

I'm not discriminatory, I resent them all with equal vigour

I was pleased to note the appointment of Laura Gordon, a fellow lawyer, as direct of the Glasgow Edinburgh Collaboration Project.

She will be splendid. I met Laura at one of those networking lunches, where you all say your piece and then strike up business-spinning conversations with potential clients. Laura and I eneded up talking shop to each other, instead of hunting bear as we were supposed to do.

Perhaps, in bringing the cities together, Laura needs to start with her fellow lawyers. The differences between the two cities has traditionally been keenly felt within the legal profession. Right now I am involved in a large property transaction. This involves my opposite number, based in the capital, having to examine mountains of documents held by me in Glasgow.

I invited him to come and see them. He demurred and asked that they be sent through to him. I told him he was being a bit "Edinburgh". He denied it, and then said he did not know what I meant. I was pulling his leg and in truth I do wonder if nowadays there is more myth than substance to the great east/west divide. It is more than 30 years since the two largest Glasgow firms set up in Edinburgh. In the 1990s, the two Edinburgh units of the "big four" reciprocated. Most sizeable firms have now followed suit and all appear to be thriving in both cities, soaking up the best business and leaving smaller fry, like me, to struggle for my meagre crust. I am not discriminatory - I resent all of them with equal vigour, regardless of city of origin. Even so, my own modest activities require frequent visits to the capital and I have often remarked that in many ways the two are now just one city.

As a Glaswegian, I would like to grumble about the snobbishness or condescension or patronising attitude of Edinburgh lawyers - but I am afraid I do not come across it much. What I get, for the most part, is friendly professional equality and an emphasis on what really counts: competence, courtesy, speed and accuracy. Indeed I get this everywhere, most of the time, and not just in Edinburgh. More than any other profession, lawyers spend much of their time dealing with each other and my overwhelming experience is that we treat each other fairly and respectfully.

The highfalutin reputation of the WS Society seems to have diminished in recent years or rather, it has become friendlier and more welcoming to outsiders - even Glaswegians. Members of the Faculty of Advocates are now much readier to travel to meet clients and instructing agents. Trains are full of them, and of trainees, solicitors and partners, happily commuting within the great central-belt metropolis.

The Edinburgh train: now there is a useful thing. Both cities assert that the best thing about the other city is the train out of it. I find this to be regardless of direction. There are always titbits of information to be picked up in the business compartments, whether from pompous phone calls, or indiscreetly loud conversations between travelling companions. I was once being harangued by a fellow traveller about a prominent individual from a major legal firm when a young woman across the aisle politely asked my companion to desist, as she worked for the firm in question.

One managing director forbids his executives to travel in business class for fear of their blabbings. Whatever else Ms Gordon may achieve, she must not abolish the Edinburgh train.