Lawyer of the Month: Brian Inkster

Mr Inkster may not have coined the ‘maverick’ label for himself but it’s absolutely not 1 he objects to as he gears up to produce his program even more in 2024, with a travel to commence recruiting new men and women to a product he believes is special, used by no other law company in Scotland on the exact same scale and with a identical geographic achieve. “We’re at this time hunting for senior solicitors in all areas of exercise to sign up for us,” he adds.

He points out his solution: “Coming from Shetland, an island community, we formulated a existence about the many years in the Highlands and Islands and I observed the require to go to locations the place there are not many solicitors with a neighborhood presence. In truth, when I set up Inksters in 1999 all my consumers were being based in Shetland and I was serving them from Glasgow. “Historically we specialised in crofting regulation – though we now protect a broad array of parts but that intended that I was being approached by people in all of the crofting counties wanting for experience in that precise discipline.”

Even now working in that location, he’s the creator of A Simple Guideline to Crofting Law revealed in 2019 and accepts that some men and women may have considered it relatively idiosyncratic to have a attorney specialising in the wants of the crofting neighborhood based mostly in Glasgow.

“But if you have the willingness and potential to go where ever you’re required you don’t need to be based mostly in that spot. Some of the connections to the islands from Glasgow had been almost certainly far better than individuals from other areas of Scotland and I see no hurdles to serving men and women in numerous considerably-flung places,” he says.

Inkster started the changeover to the Plug & Engage in design 11 several years ago. Starting with a few of consultants, the business was a thing of a hybrid, also directly employing solicitors but some two and a half years in the past it moved totally across to a fee sharing model.

On the firm’s plugplaylaw.com web-site Inkster explains that Plug & Participate in is a term coined by Mitch Kowalski in his e book The Great Authorized Reformation: Notes from the Field describing firms at which senior lawyers can work as a collective, with improved technological innovation and again-office assist.

This involves a hub-and-spoke product with a back again-office hub (Inksters has that in the ‘Inksterplex’ at its Glasgow HQ) and spokes elsewhere, set up in towns or parts wherever new advisor solicitors are geographically based mostly.

Mr Inkster saw the price share legislation company develop in England & Wales out of the Authorized Products and services Act 2007.

“Although we really do not have Stomach muscles (Substitute Enterprise Construction) companies in Scotland yet, I decided to generate a forum like all those, which while have a tendency to be far more virtual as they do not deliver bricks and mortar and in particular deficiency back again office environment and secretarial guidance.

“I made the decision to create a agency that was equivalent but a bit various as while these were being predominantly ‘virtual’ companies they weren’t giving bricks and mortar outside of potentially a conference place in a serviced place of work.

“The lawyers at Inksters are self-utilized and run beneath an umbrella wherever the business supplies aid such as back-office environment companies and specialist indemnity insurance policies, know-how and dollars home assistance and the solicitors have their have consumer financial institution that they have constructed up them selves. Almost everything, in point, that you would assume in a classic legislation organization.”

“Plus, there is the benefit that instead possessing them sit in workplaces in rural Scotland as standard practitioners we have specialists who, if someone will come to them with a need that they never specialise in, can refer them to somebody else in the community who is a lot more of an authority in that certain location of regulation the client requires,” he claims.

He explains: If you are in a modest city or village someplace in Scotland, there may well only be one particular or two other solicitors – if that – in the vicinity. Potentially you really do not want to do the job for the business you’re at the moment in but don’t want to go and work for its immediate competitor.

“Setting up your individual business inevitably consists of a whole lot of administration, pink tape, and forms so an individual in that placement can arrive to us and all of a sudden have obtain to everything they need to set up a legislation company but without having a great deal of the exertion. Utilizing our model, all they want to do is focus on executing the law we choose treatment of the relaxation for them.”
The non-public purchasers that Inksters is working with are men and women and smaller to medium-sized organizations with solicitors specialising in a large vary of authorized matters and the firm’s approach is also underpinned by recent world activities and the evolution of the demographic and employment landscape.

It had been the to start with Scottish legislation agency to use Twitter (now X) and to have a YouTube Channel and whilst the Covid-19 pandemic curtailed Mr Inkster’s capability to vacation freely to destinations as disparate as Aberdeen, Forfar and Renfrew, online conference facilities now allow for solicitors to have experience-to-deal with meetings every time essential and the rest of vacation restrictions have allowed him to resume talking engagements on entrepreneurship, marketing, technology and corporate social accountability.

Which is a position he plainly enjoys, getting tutored then lectured for a number of many years in organization, ethics, finance and observe recognition at the College of Glasgow and on the law of servitudes at the University of Strathclyde.

He’s also an energetic contributor to the thetimeblawg.com, a site he launched and on which he discusses the past, present and future observe of regulation (just lately largely about AI or Lawful Products and services Regulation Reform in Scotland).

Regardless of staying a frequent visitor to Shetland wherever he attended Anderson Higher Faculty, it’s unsurprising that existence in Glasgow greater allows him to go after his curiosity in theatre, the arts and cinema.

This an integral element of family members as very well as leisure lifestyle as his wife, Nicola Walls, is head of arts and lifestyle at PagePark Architects, whose initiatives have included the redevelopment of Eden Courtroom Theatre in Inverness, Scottish Opera’s Theatre Royal in Glasgow, Leeds Playhouse and new foyers for Birmingham’s Symphony Hall.

Mr Inkster cites an entrepreneurial spirit and progressive mindset at the coronary heart of the agency as nicely as its willingness to tackle market areas this sort of as crofting and parking regulation as the cause for its collecting awards in expert and progressive fields as well as serially attracting senior attorneys in diverse legal places and geographical locations.

He thinks 2024 will be a person of option for the company. “The days of someone becoming a member of a standard observe and being for lifetime seem to be to be disappearing.

“People now have distinct aspirations new varieties of firms are rising, and solicitors are locating the sort of aid that we provide ever more valuable in helping them to spread their wings.”