An announcement minutes before The Firm went to press means that Richard Keen QC will trade in his treasurer’s petty cash box and pick up the keys to parliament house as he is crowned new dean of the faculty of Advocates. The firm was able to catch up with Keen shortly before the election to find out his views on how the faculty must move forward. will he now put his plans into action?

After a hard fought election campaign Richard Keen QC is the next man to lead Scotland’s advocates forward in this time of great change and reform, taking over from Roy Martin after his three year tensure.
Martin’s successor faces a steep challenge to position the Faculty of Advocates as a body that remains relevant and essential to the advocacy profession, following the setting up of breakaway chambers by John Campbell and John Carruthers, the devolution of Stables, and the setting up of the McKinnon Stable in Glasgow, all of which have fundamentally altered the landscape and long established status quo of the profession in the last twelve months.
On taking up the role Keen said: “It is a great privilege to be elected as Dean of the Faculty of Advocates. With that privilege comes responsibility - responsibilty in particular for leading an independent and effective Bar which continues to meet the needs of those who require its services and the aspirations of those who provide them.
“If things are to remain the same then some things will require to change.”
The Firm was able to get behind all the PR speak when it met up with Keen to get his views on taking the Faculty forward shortly before the election kicked off. “There is change, and it is being led,” Keen told us. “I can quite understand that people want their own business model going forward. We are going to have to innovate. We are going to have to change the service. Nobody doubts that.”
Keen is aware that one reason some advocates have set up independently, and an intermediary organisation like InstructCounsel can exist, is because advocates have found themselves unable to market themselves directly to their potential clients, or even to the instructing solicitors, who often rely on more nebulous methods to select their counsel of choice. The system works, he believes, but could be refined.
“I sometimes say that we are ‘labour only sub-contractors’. We specialise in a particular area, namely advocacy,” he says.
“But there is a problem; the solicitor is the gatekeeper. The solicitor has the client, and the solicitor decides whether to go to counsel or not. Or to a solicitor advocate. No doubt, the issue of the solicitor being the gatekeeper creates potential tensions. There are sections of the bar who feel they perhaps lose out.”
“Firms themselves quickly put together a stable of counsel that they do or do not employ. Trying to go over the heads of the solicitors direct to the client is a difficult issue. Many clients require the discipline provided by a solicitor as well as the skills provided by an advocate. Many clients are bound to rely on the advice of their solicitor as to who they should employ as counsel.”
The mental barrier of traditional thinking is one factor which has thus far prevented advocates advertising their skills in the same fashion as other ‘labour only sub-contractors’ in a default forum as accessible as for instance the Yellow Pages. Keen acknowledges that a more commercially minded approach is becoming possible, but that the skills of salesmanship are no substitute for proven expertise.
“There have always been certain professional limitations on marketing. They are disappearing rapidly. The best marketing is to win a case, or to do a good job for a reasonable fee. That is how reputations are built, not by advertising. Nevertheless you do have to communicate what your potential skills are.”
Keen has a well deserved, formidable reputation, acting in the acquittal of Lockerbie defender Lhamin Khalifah Fhimah, and undertaking the Princess Diana inquest, among many others. Keen is aware that those who have established a solid reputation do not struggle for work. It is those who have yet to secure their aura of professional success that face the biggest challenge.
“My major concern is for the most junior 20/25% of the bar. How do we ensure that they get a reasonable and fair opportunity to actually begin to practice?” he asks.
“If you go to work in a firm of solicitors, that firm will feed you work, and you can get established. Whereas people calling to the bar, they may have friends, relatives or colleagues who will give them some work, but how do we ensure everyone of ability who comes into the bar gets a fair and reasonable opportunity to get established in practice? That is the biggest challenge we face at the moment. That is an area where the Faculty may have to address its practices.”
And Keen is certain that the Faculty will be able to adapt to the changing environment, which he says it has done with every potential crisis or sea change it has faced.
“People have been predicting the demise of the Faculty since before I joined it,” he says. “ When I went for my first interview with the Clerk of the Faculty in the 1970s, he told me not to come to the bar because it was doomed as they were about to move divorce to the Sheriff Court. The Faculty has in the past been somewhat inward looking, but it has changed. It is still a very dynamic, very effective operation.”
Stayed tuned folks, as the time are a changin’.