Nick Hanning is a Legal Executive with the law firm Reynolds Williams in Poole, Dorset and has written this article, titled "If you want to change the world every day – be a lawyer".
Lawyers can change the world. Nick Hanning did. In July 2006, he took a client’s case all the way to the highest court in the land – and won.
But that was beside the point, he writes. For as much as the argument was about the law, the important thing was that this case had highlighted the issue of bullying and harassment in the workplace. In Majrowski the real issue was the dignity and welfare of employees everywhere.
The law can be a strange sort of career choice. Unlike many other professions, such as medicine, nursing, or being an astronaut or train driver, children rarely dream of being a lawyer and plan their education accordingly. What is more, on entering the profession, aspiring lawyers may have little real idea about what it will involve and where they will finish up. Those dreaming of LA Law or Kavanagh QC are liable to a rude awakening.
Doubtless, there are exceptions but your author was not one of them. For the first 20 or so years of my life I believed law was a dusty, boring subject. I had some idea that solicitors existed, as I had visited a firm with my mother when she divorced (and noticed the dusty shelf-bound books proving I was right). Even so I had no real comprehension of what they actually did despite my mother's frequent allegations they were not doing it. The thought of being a lawyer myself never even crossed my mind.
I left school without A-levels or a proper job, let alone a career. Several years and rather more jobs later and still with no ambition beyond the vague appreciation that qualifications would probably be quite handy, I enrolled at evening classes intending to do A-level English and Maths. I took a dislike to the English classes and, as it was a long drive to the College of Further Education, looked for another halfway suitable course running on the same evening. It turned out to be Law.
Very quickly I learned Lesson 1. The law is everywhere. No matter what you are doing there is a law of some sort which is relevant. Your home, your car, your work, your family and all your possessions are governed by some rule of law. It may be a criminal law, a statutory duty, a tortious duty or a family or contractual obligation. Whatever form it takes, from birth to death and even thereafter, "the Law" affects what we do, how we do it and what happens if it goes wrong. Dusty and boring? It was actually rather interesting.
Lesson 2 followed. The law is not static; it is constantly changing. New technology, new situations and an evolving society mean that existing laws need review and refinement and that new laws have to be introduced (did you know the present government has introduced 3,000 new criminal offences?). And the more laws there are, the more they need reviewing and refinement. Dusty and boring? Law does not stand still long enough for the dust to settle.
Time passed. I got my A-level and discovered that the only way to be a lawyer without a degree was to become something called a Legal Executive. I must have had ambition by then as I relocated to find a job as a trainee and enrolled to do the ILEX exams (Parts 1 and 2 in those days and much harder of course; everything was tougher in the old days . . .)
Doing real work for real people taught me Lesson 3. Law is not just changing; it is also open to interpretation. Just because an old case was decided one way, it does not mean the 'rule' of that case will always apply. Your client's case may be different. Similarly, a Statute or some Regulations may say something but what that means in practice may not be clear.
On one level, we all learn this very early. There is an Interpretation Act and those 'Golden' and 'Mischief' rules. We are told about 'distinguishing' one case from the facts of another and read how the great, late Lord Denning would call on Equity to do the right thing whenever he saw fit.
But it was all academic in the books. The fine points of interpretation were a subject which other people would argue about in those old dusty cases. Lesson 3 was discovering it worked right now in real life and that this was where the fun really started.
My first appreciation of all this was in the context of Social Security law. For reasons beyond the scope of this piece, I inherited responsibility for a Welfare Rights Advice Service. The people who made rules about who could claim for what benefits, and when, had clearly taken Lesson 2 to heart, for the rules were changing all the time and were ferociously complex. Not infrequently, the guidance issued to social security staff trying to interpret the legislation was questionable and as the staff themselves were often overworked they too made mistakes.
This was fertile ground for someone willing to argue novel points; and Social Security Appeal Tribunals were an informal (but unquestionably judicial) forum in which to develop unusual arguments. It was all in a good cause, too; fighting for an extra few pounds a week for people to whom it made a real difference.
I was thrilled when, on appeal to the Social Security Commissioners, my interpretation of Regulations governing an aspect of the payment of nursing home fees was held to be correct, contrary to the policy and practice of the (then) Department of Health & Social Security. Unfortunately, new Regulations were introduced closing the loophole but I could still grin and claim the Regulations had been introduced thanks to me. More importantly, though, my client managed to stay where she wanted to stay.
Some years later I found myself representing a man who had suffered a nervous breakdown after he was mercilessly bullied by another manager. I always feared that we would lose this case but with the support of the Legal Aid scheme, a superb barrister and some good evidence, we secured the then largest award of damages for a first breakdown case. I could not help getting tearful as the judgment was read out: sharing the client's relief at being so totally vindicated was hugely emotional (and, um… the pollen count was very high, especially for November).
That case was directly responsible for the 'once in a lifetime' thrill of having my opinion confirmed by the House of Lords (Majrowski). The case concerned the application of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. Along with many others, I had long believed the Act applied to the workplace and that employers should be vicariously liable for breach of the Act by their staff. On the other hand, plenty of people had told me I was wrong.
That the Majrowski case ended up in the House of Lords really had little to do with me save perhaps for the fact that I was so convinced of the position that I pleaded it in what might otherwise have been called personal injury claims, and I was so pigheaded that I would never back down. Now, people tell me I changed the law. It is a flattering suggestion but of course, it was never just me, it was a team of us, and in any case, what we really did was confirm the law rather than change it.
But that is really beside the point. Much as the argument was about the law, the important thing was that the case had highlighted the issue of bullying and harassment in the workplace and confirmed that targets of inappropriate behaviour have another possible remedy. In Majrowski the real issue was the dignity and welfare of employees everywhere just as, in the nursing home fees case, the real issue was the dignity and welfare of the sick and the elderly.
And that is the most important 'Lesson' of all; the law is about people. Whatever the professed subject or intent of any particular piece of legislation, ultimately it is its impact on people which is the acid test. As lawyers, our role is to help those people deal with that impact.
Whether you are doing residential conveyancing, family work, personal injury litigation or wills and probate, the job you do and how you do it has the capacity to affect and change your client's life - usually only modestly, but sometimes fundamentally. It is a huge responsibility and the pain when things go wrong can be severe, but if you want to change a world every day, be a lawyer.
This article was first published in The Legal Executive Student & Education Guide (August 2007)
