Attorney of the Month: Elaine Motion

“I usually required to be a law firm,” claims Ms Motion. “I watched a film at school termed ‘A Man for All Seasons’. There was a little bit in that activated a thing in me and I assumed ‘I want to be a lawyer’.”

Ms Motion didn’t come from a family members of legal professionals, with her father currently being an accountant and her mom an award-successful hair stylist. As nicely as the movie, she suggests it might have been partly a reaction to her dad wanting her to stick to in his footsteps that built her go for legislation. Ms Movement states: “I wonder if it is also simply because my father preferred me to be an accountant and I knew I would are unsuccessful miserably at that. I really do not have a mathematical bone in my system.”

No matter what the commitment, Ms Movement has carved out a long and prosperous authorized profession – with numerous significant-profile cases concentrating on human legal rights and civil liberties – that has taken her from Scotland to New Zealand and back home yet again.

She understood at school that she wanted to go to the College of Edinburgh to analyze. She wrote to Stephen Woolman, now Lord Woolman, the associate dean of the Legislation College, and started studying regulation at the age of 17. Ms Movement claims her pursuits lay in private personal injury law and right after she qualified she chose to join Thompsons, in advance of selecting she desired to widen her experience.

“I preferred as a lot breadth and depth as possible, and not to only be a PI attorney,” clarifies Ms Motion. “I assume it’s a worry for the occupation that way too numerous people specialise significantly as well quickly in their occupation.”

After accomplishing commercial litigation at what was then McGrigor Donald, Ms Movement manufactured a transfer to New Zealand to be a barrister and solicitor to develop her job.

Describing why she moved to the other aspect of the planet, she suggests: “In the 1980s you joined a law business and tended to keep for lifestyle. We wished to go someplace else. We did not fancy Hong Kong – we experienced just experienced Tiananmen Square – and we didn’t want to go to London. We satisfied some close friends from Auckland, determined to go to New Zealand, and we liked it.”

On returning to Scotland Ms Movement experienced decided she preferred to operate for Balfour and Manson and, once again, realized her purpose. “Some individuals say matters are intended to be, and some say it is just luck, but I suppose it is a blend of each. I obtained a career with Fred Tyler at Balfour and Manson and relaxation is history, as they say.”

Considering that signing up for Balfour and Manson in 1993, and starting to be a partner in 1997, she is happy to have been concerned in a selection of ground-breaking circumstances, from regulatory to prison carelessness and public function.

Amid some of the finest-acknowledged circumstances she has worked on are Napier, Somerville and Davidson vs Scottish Ministers, which centred close to human legal rights for prisoners and the follow of ‘slopping out’, and Valerie Cuthbertson vs Friends Provident. The latter scenario finished up in the Court docket of Session right after a extended struggle which had witnessed the insurance provider refuse to shell out out on a client’s important sickness coverage.

Ms Movement explains: “Cuthbertson versus Good friends Provident is just one of the most significant scenarios I have ever completed. It’s all about life insurance policies policies and the authorized examination for professing payments. The situation adjusted the law across the total of the British isles and it’s now statute. The take a look at is now in favour of people today who are attempting to get critical sickness or life insurance payments. It is massive and from a human position of see it’s where by I come from.”

Additional lately, Ms Motion was the direct solicitor in the authorized workforce that argued in 2018 that the United kingdom could, if it wished, unilaterally revoke Article 50 and terminate Brexit. The European Courtroom of Justice ruling fundamentally confirmed that the Uk could revoke the Brexit procedure with out the agreement of fellow EU states.

Just a calendar year later on she took on what will have to be the circumstance with the optimum general public profile of her career – in summertime 2019 when the United kingdom government tried using to prorogue Parliament. Ms Motion and her team acted for a cross-get together team of MPs which dominated that Boris Johnson’s five-7 days prorogation of Parliament was illegal.

“I continue to pinch myself,” she claims. “You just just can’t get a more thrilling case than prorogation in conditions of the sheer pace and complexity and how it modified on a each day basis. I was termed at 7am in the early morning to be instructed a plane was on its way to Balmoral to check out to prorogue Parliament.

“It was surreal. I was going for walks on the seashore in Harris in the early morning right before traveling down to be in entrance of the courtroom on the exact working day. It was a huge case, but we are a small, restricted workforce and I imagine that is what functions. We’re pretty much telepathic in what we will need to do.”

This 12 months Ms Motion has represented the Faculty and Nursery Milk Alliance in its landmark action from the Scottish governing administration in a judicial review at the Court docket Of Session concerning the new Scottish Milk and Nutritious Snack Plan. The scheme aims to give a absolutely free part of milk and a healthy snack to pre-college small children across Scotland. The Alliance said the new plan experienced, unintentionally, still left many nurseries and childminders out of pocket. It explained this could direct to kids missing out on their totally free milk entitlement – the opposite of the scheme’s aim.

Ms Movement suggests: “It’s a flagship plan of the Scottish govt and for it to are unsuccessful on the two deficiency of consultation and irrationality is actually very massive. Our shoppers designed very clear they want to make absolutely sure the youngsters get their milk – this is what it’s all about. The governing administration claimed they would seek the advice of, in black and white, and they didn’t. And the way they went about examining the costing of the plan was identified to be irrational, for case in point it didn’t rate non-dairy solutions for youngsters.”

Yet another scenario Ms Movement highlights is Canon’s White prosperous action against the Scottish govt on church lockdowns through the pandemic. The Catholic priest together with nearly 30 Protestant Ministers argued as a result of legal professionals in the Court of Session that banning Christians from attending church breached human legal rights. The decide ruled in their favour that what the government was carrying out was illegal.

Ms Motions states: “We received on the working day. My counsel are phenomenally experienced and amongst the greatest in the recreation. It is the only profitable coronavirus litigation.

“It’s great to be associated in cases that continue to spark your curiosity.”

Seeking at the authorized profession as a complete, Ms Motion thinks that just one of the major concerns at the instant is about entry to justice. “For men and women and for tiny organisations and corporations, it’s prohibitive,” she suggests. “It’s really difficult for organisations and folks to be capable to litigate.

“Another factor is access to courts and no matter whether hearings will be remote or deal with-to-encounter. I’m a good supporter of confront-to-facial area the place doable. There is nothing more essential than encounter-to-facial area for witnesses, clientele, the courts and the judges.”

In conditions of alternatives, she thinks crowdfunding has excellent likely. She points out: “A large amount of our community regulation problems are now crowdfunded. There are often impressive ways of obtaining backing to get some problems.”

Individually, Ms Motion says she was emotion a bit weary right after the Brexit and prorogation conditions. Balfour and Manson presented her a 3-thirty day period sabbatical that she planned to consider in 2020 – but then the pandemic hit. “She suggests: “My aim this year is to consider that sabbatical and have some correct downtime. I want to recharge and come back again reinvigorated.”

She’s also eager to recognise the individuals she has worked with above the decades. “It’s not about one human being, it is the team of people today you function with that make matters a results. I’ve been amazingly fortunate. I’ve been with Balfour and Manson for 29 many years. It is a fantastic location to operate. We have folks that have been for 30 or 40 several years and that staff loyalty speaks volumes. I have praise for predecessors in Balfour and Manson who created up that lifestyle and the crew. I wouldn’t be exactly where I am currently with no them or my loved ones.”