If anyone thought Sir Menzies Campbell would settle for a life of fishing and gardening after standing down as leader of Lib Dems then they were wrong. Steven Raeburn met Sir Menzies Campbell and former Dean of Faculty Roy Martin to find out more about their latest venture, Terra Firma.

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Were it not for the surrealist course trod by modern politics, which values the judgement of apparatchiks, focus groups, the Daily Mail and stylists ahead of wit, intellect, guile and intelligence, Sir Menzies Campbell could have joined Gandhi, Clinton and even the messianic Blair as one of those elite leaders who practised law before attaining the highest pinnacle of public life.

The former Liberal Democrat leader’s withdrawal from the front line of politics has freed up his time, and unlike other contemporaries such as John Major, who said he was off to enjoy cricket and warm beer when he was actually propping up the arms trade with the notorious Carlyle Group, Campbell has returned to one of the fields in which he had formerly excelled.  Anyone witnessing his warnings and disavowals of Britain’s slavish occupation of Iraq would need no convincing that advocacy remains the skill for which he is best suited and will be best remembered.  No mean feat, considering he also has ‘Olympic Athlete’ on his CV.

Together with chairman Roy Martin, erstwhile Dean of the Faculty, and 28 other like-minded advocates, Campbell is part of the new

Terra Firma stable, as part of a collective of specialist practitioners hoping to make their mark in the new era of devolved stables, increased competition, and above all, specialisation.  Both have just left high profile posts of leadership, although neither appear to have any appetite for fading into the background, or stepping back from the front line.

“The law is my profession. Politics is an occupation,” says Campbell, looking every 72 inches the picture of healthy vigour.
“All the way through, I went on practising and paid full subscription to the Faculty, and practised as much as my political responsibilities would allow. It is natural.  I never really left the law.” 

In fact, it could be argued he still has a lot to prove, having declined an approach from then Lord Chancellor Lord Mackay to become a High Court Judge, and thereafter not even being invited for interview after subsequently applying through the Judicial Appointments Board, which he help wring into existence. A return to a career in law always seemed to be his destiny.

“Lord Ross, who knew my father, asked me when I first went into the House of Commons, what I was doing there.  ‘Why aren’t you up at the Court of Session earning money?’ he asked me.”  

“My primary obligation is to my constituency, but in recess, as far as my political commitments allow, I’m going to practise as much as I can. I regard it as my profession; an intellectual stimulus.  If you’ve done Prime Minister’s questions, then even the 1st Division holds no terror.”

Former Dean and Queens Counsel Roy Martin also always intended to return to daily practice following his three year tenure helming the activity of the Faculty.

“Terra Firma is a consequence of that,” he says. “I also took silk recently in England, and intend to pursue that.  The opportunity with Terra Firma was an obvious avenue to be explored and taken. The opportunity came about because those of us in the chambers tend to have practices in property, land related administrative law, local government and so on.  Menzies’s experience in licensing and planning fits very much within it. That is what Terra Firma intends to present as a group of practitioners experienced and able within these fields.

“That is a reflection that in the Faculty these days it is accepted that people should be able to present ourselves in ways that are more accessible and identifiable for increasingly sophisticated clients. The client wants to see that the advocate they are going to get for that particular case is someone with experience in that area. If you present yourself in that way, then you fulfil that expectation.”

The issue of dedicated experience in a particular practice area is a relatively recent one in the half millennium history of the advocacy trade.  At the outset of Campbell’s career, the narrowing yet deepening of expertise, so ubiquitous across all the law now, was then a thing unheard of.
“I was called to the bar on 1 November 1968. By the time I was five years in I was appearing in the High Court one week in criminal cases, and the next week doing a planning inquiry.  There is no real tradition at the Scottish bar of specialisation, but as the volume of work has increased, clients’ expectations are higher; they want a specialist. There were 97 or 98 advocates when I was called. Now there are five times that.”

Campbell’s rapid ousting from his role as leader of the Liberal Democrats seemed at the time to have more to do with his image and profile rather than his leadership and ability, and the image consultant’s victory is Parliament’s - and the country’s - loss. Campbell was one of the few voices of reason to be heard in the gallop to Iraq, and one may expect that he feels there is unfinished business to attend to.  Campbell however is clear that whilst he has left that level of politics behind, his experience can be applied forward into the law.

“This is a life of opportunity, and I’ve had tremendous opportunities. I’m not really concerned about ticking off achievements. For me the intellectual challenge and the rigour of the law is something I am immensely attracted to, and it has some readover to politics.

“Take something like Iraq, which I have been associated with. There were periods when the forensic ability which is created by legal practice is enormously important. Particularly when the Prime Minister would say things like “This is the right thing to do.” Well that is fine, but there has to be a rational case for taking the country to war. Particularly with the consequences as we now know them.”
“I’m not doing this out of any thwarted ambition. I’m doing this because I want to do it. I regard it as a natural progression.”

It is likely that the attachment of two such familiar and respected names to the Terra Firma chambers will be all the promotion the stable will need. Martin points out that whilst there is no formal restriction preventing individual advocates marketing their skills, doing so would not serve a stable based on its collegiality. However he does acknowledge that Campbell’s record in politics, with all the nuanced added value that provides, is a powerful asset to the group.
“If - because of experience one has had, not just of cases, whether in politics or having been an office bearer in the Faculty- the client is more inclined to instruct you, then that is simply part of what you are able to offer. A great deal of the advice you are giving has a component beyond the strictly legal,” Martin says.

“They are buying your judgement as well as your advice. These are not discrete. There is a very distinct overlap.” adds Campbell.
Fewer than a hundred advocates at the opening of Campbell and Martin’s advocacy careers, to just under five hundred now, it is clear that the profession has evolved faster in the last generation than at any earlier time in its history.  The advent of the Judicial Appointments Board and the entry of women into all professions has kicked advocacy –once the traditional route to the bench- on the track towards modernity and meritocracy.

“When I first arrived at the bar there was a progression. After ten years –if not much was happening, or your wife didn’t like Edinburgh - you went to be a Sheriff. Very few people went on to be in practice, they hoped to be Court of Session judges,” Campbell says.
“What we are seeing now is a reflection of what is happening south of the border. People don’t want to be High Court judges. They want to stay in practice and retire on their own terms.  Some judges actually want to come back to practice. The people who were at Glasgow University with me were from the same schools, the rugby playing schools. The profession has opened up in an entirely remarkable and justified way, and for women, too.”

Martin observes that the specialisation offered by Terra Firma is part of a present trend in which other groupings are coming together in similar fields, a move which Martin says will “raise both awareness and standards, and all of the proper aspirations of the legal profession as a whole.”
“We would like to be seen as those who can deliver within the areas of the law we have identified with. I am confident we will be able to do that,” he adds.

Campbell goes further. “I hope it is a set of Chambers whose door is open to people with a similar interest, which demonstrates professional competence to a level which justifies membership. I am sure it will make a contribution to the development of the law by the provision of high class, well resourced legal services.”

Given his track record, experience, contacts, statesmanship and diligence, it is certainly likely that the law itself may evolve and develop through actions argued by Campbell, Martin and others at Terra Firma. The dawning of alternative business structures and fluctuations in the membership of the Faculty and Faculty Services Limited should not inhibit the growth and success of the advocacy profession, he says.

“I have never felt at any stage that the Faculty needed protection. The skills which individual members of the Faculty have to possess, and the rigour of continuing professional development mean that the members of the Faculty holding themselves out as having a special ability in areas of the law should fear no one. No matter what the structures of the legal profession may be,” Campbell says.
His own strength, he argues, and that of members of the profession is the one skill – the essential and ineffable skill- of dispassionately making a successful argument, is sufficiently necessary to allow those who have it to flourish.

“Advocacy is an enormously important part of what we do. It is a skill that you can learn, but it is very considerably assisted by experience and judgement,” he says.
“Quality advocacy is something the group of people at Terra Firma have to offer.”