There is a new species of lawyer in the UK today. This new breed do not consider themselves lawyers, but as businessmen and women, first and foremost. They are not merely a professional service provider, but a professional service partner. The Firm meets one of Scotland’s new breed of lawyers, HBJ Gateley Wareing’s Glen Gilson.

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Age is really quite a pointless statistic. Apart from giving you a rough idea of how close you are to being boxed-up and thrown down a hole, age actually means very little. Clearly it means absolutely nothing to lawyer Glen Gilson, who at just 30 years of age is already a partner at HBJ Gateley Wareing and heads up the firm’s growing Private Client and Financial Services department.

I meet Gilson for a coffee at Indigo Yard in Edinburgh’s West End. He arrives promptly and we begin to talk. He appears to be everything my Mother wanted me to be but, sadly, am not. Intelligent, articulate, ambitious, focused and driven. He is the embodiment of the new generation of young lawyers, who, within the next decade or so, will be leading the legal profession forward.
Gilson was raised in various towns and cities in Scotland and England as a consequence of having a father who worked in the aviation industry. After school he went on to university in Dundee to study law and got his diploma from Edinburgh University. He trained at Turcan Connell after which he spent time working in his father’s aviation business. It was during negotiations for the ultimate sale of his father’s company that the opportunity for Gilson to join Henderson Boyd Jackson, as it was back then, arose.

“My plan was initially to go to the bar,” he says, \'but I decided to spend some time in my father’s business. During the sale of his company I got to know HBJ and we began talking. It soon became clear that Private Client was a focus for growth to them. My first day at HBJ was also my 26th birthday.”

At that time, as Gilson admits, Private Client was a relatively small offering within HBJ. Up until then the firm had focused mainly on corporate clients, so Gilson joined with the remit to develop the Private Client department. Quite a challenge for someone who was still only a newly qualified lawyer.

“There was a Trust & Executry capability at the firm when I started, so one of the first things we did was bring in a higher spec of technical offering and add some real depth to the Private Client team. We also brought in significant financial planning expertise, so that we could offer clients a comprehensive wealth management, tax, trust and succession planning service. We have also added some excellent family lawyers and we also incorporated the firm’s residential conveyancing area, which was a two partner operation at that time. So, now we really do have an all round offering.”

Clearly, since joining HBJ Gateley Wareing in 2004 Gilson has been a busy chap. As well as leading what has developed into a 50-plus strong Private Client team he also sits on the management board alongside HBJ Gateley Wareing Senior Partner Malcolm MacPherson and fellow partners Miles Ede, David Kirchin, Fraser Jackson and Simon Catto. And in recent months HBJ Gateley Wareing’s aggressive expansion policy in Scotland, which has seen it swallow up firms such as Ferguson Dewar and Boyds in Glasgow and Taylor Kinross in Edinburgh, means that Gilson is now part of a substantially larger law firm than when he first joined, something he believes has enabled his department to offer clients even better service.

“My aim is always to bring added value to clients,” he says. “Since 2004 we have seen year on year growth and taking on Taylor Kinross gave us, as a department, a step up the ladder. With the Ferguson Dewar and Boyds deals we went very quickly from having a relatively modest Glasgow presence to a significant presence. We now have a symmetrical Private Client offer in Glasgow as in Edinburgh.”

Despite his role in guiding the department and the firm forward, Gilson is keen to maintain his contact with clients, something he feels is vital for lawyers.

“I have always maintained a client facing role as well as my management role. The department now has lots of highly experienced practitioners in it, but it’s important for me to keep that client facing role as I have to keep on top of any technical developments in the Private Client area. Just because I head up the department doesn’t mean I can take my eye of the ball. Technical development is an integral part of being a lawyer today and that goes for all lawyers, regardless of their position within their firm.”

Private Client, as an area of law, has had rather a chequered history. Rather like flared trousers, Private Client seems to drift in and out of vogue. But Gilson is confident that now is the time for firms to embrace Private Client work. He says: “Over the last 20 years or so in the profession the real growth area was corporate. I feel that private client is the new corporate. For the last 20 years young lawyers didn’t want to do Private Client work. With the trend for lawyers to pursue corporate law careers there has been a lack of personnel in the Private Client area and as a result we have only seen a handful of Private Client firms develop. I’d say there are only around 10 firms in Scotland that have a complete Private Client capability as it is expensive to develop that offer by investing in bringing together all the experts you need to do it comprehensively.”

Even as a student Gilson was commercially aware, running his own club nights and even launching a record label, so it easy to see where his commercial nous comes from. But it is this commercial approach to law that Gilson says is the norm at HBJ: “I feel it is important to be commercially aware. I always see myself as a businessperson and then a lawyer and I hold a number of exec and non-exec directorships. If I could develop the same level of business skills that Malcolm has then I would consider that a very valuable asset.

So, does Gilson see himself as the next Malcolm MacPherson?

“The firm is of such a size that we require a wide management function. There are a number of very capable partners involved in our management that I am fortunate to work alongside. There is no room to accommodate one person’s egotistical aspirations. We work well as a team to push forward together.”

The future for Gilson is bright. He is already marching up the ladder at one of Scotland’s most exciting firms and it looks like he’s going to be around for some time. So, it must be true when the sports pundits say “if you’re good enough you’re old enough.”