Lawyer of the Month: Laura Cameron

“When I described to my late father, he extremely moderately mentioned ‘I’d been waiting for several years for you to recognise that’, and instantly advised an alternative job in the regulation.” The unexpected U-transform was a fortuitous one.

“I loved it and have under no circumstances appeared again,” claims Cameron, who joined McGrigors just about 29 several years back and became a partner at the venerable organization, whose antecedents date again to 1769. It then merged with London-based multinational company Pinsent Masons in 2012, and she grew to become its 1st female board member.

Very last calendar year Pinsent Masons announced that Cameron, who is based mostly in Glasgow, will succeed John Cleland as the firm’s running spouse. She experienced stepped down after seven years as international head of the firm’s 880-strong threat advisory expert services team which represents about a 3rd of the turnover of a organization with some 430 companions and 3,000 persons around the earth.

It is a complicated agenda to continue to keep on prime of, and a person that will be augmented by assuming her new responsibility at the top of the company, but Cameron claims that she’s “delighted and amazingly honoured to have been elected by my peers as Pinsent Masons’ initially female managing companion and just cannot wait around to get commenced.”

Equally she and the agency, she states, are vastly good about law. “We’re always striving to do better and at our core are established to retain ourselves pertinent to clientele. This will involve imagining in advance about what they will have to have – and that incorporates staying impressive in the use of technological know-how and typically remaining ahead of the curve when it will come to the client’s desires.”

Danger advisory services is a contentious place involving litigation and dispute resolution and is part of Pinsent Masons’ service in each geography and jurisdiction the business handles. “I deliberately became a litigator mainly because I delight in the slash and thrust of the courtroom and the really hard get the job done that goes into the preparation and presentation of a scenario,” she says. “And the notion of getting courtroom decisions develop new legislation is a little bit of a thrill.”

These have provided, she suggests, criminal conditions for big corporate entities. “I’ve done a enormous sum more than the decades in terms of advising company clientele about how to stay clear of wellness and security incidents, but I have also been associated in defence instances in which clients have been prosecuted for disasters and fatalities, frequently in the construction, plane and oil and gas sectors.”

She adds that when she was head of the team it broadened its skillset by recruiting folks with experience drawn from other places of expert solutions in forensic accounting, tax and plan guidance and the taking care of partner’s function will let her to do the same, even though on a lot bigger scale.

“Risk advisory solutions is truly a a great deal broader umbrella for all fashion of points. We check out to assist consumers stay away from predicaments that could develop into contentious but that simply cannot usually be prevented so when – as occurs in some cases – factors go erroneous we’re there to support them navigate their way out of it.”

Inevitably, as she was Pinsent Masons’ first female board member – and now ready to develop into its very first female handling lover – the ‘glass ceiling’ issue calls for to be requested. “When I was elected to the board in 2012 I was the only woman all over the table and that took a bit of obtaining used to – not just for me for my colleagues,” she recollects.

“Since then, there has been a full change in phrases of feminine representation though we still have a large amount of function to do, as do our peers, in phrases of girls occupying management and husband or wife positions.”

In 2014 the company released Challenge Sky, a programme aimed at attaining an improved gender harmony in its partnership and senior leadership team by removing boundaries to the development of women of all ages to the optimum degrees in just the business.

“It’s critical that we have range in its broadest sense all around our choice-creating tables but in purely gender conditions, if we have been owning this discussion in 5 or ten many years the landscape would search very various since in the existing consumption of trainees and regulation graduates the split is now heavily weighted toward girls and we require to make sure we are encouraging, mentoring and sponsoring our female colleagues as they appear by way of the enterprise.”

As controlling lover, she says she will confront a assortment of challenges. “One is building certain that we proceed to look following our customers in an revolutionary and applicable way. Also, we should nurture talent in just the organization and embrace the demands of a multi-generational workforce,” she suggests.

“Younger folks more and more tend to check out private advancement and the good quality of their work. They never always glance for upwards but sometimes lateral moves and our STRIDE programme makes it possible for individuals to be put into new positions, probably going from Australia to London or Dublin to South Africa and that has been an remarkable practical experience for the company as effectively as the men and women.”

Also vital to the future of expertise is a dedication to both diversity and inclusion (DNI) and the overall ESG framework. “We are a reason-led firm and persons want to know that we are not only dedicated to that but that we in fact comply with via on our commitments since that is totally crucial to our business enterprise.”

Cameron has been married to her spouse Philip, also a attorney, for extra than 25 yrs and has two developed-up youngsters. Regardless of holding a top situation with a world wide agency that involves earth vacation (and a individual fondness for Singapore’s cosmopolitan vibe) there is almost nothing she suggests she enjoys much more than a hike up a Scottish hill or about a loch. “Whatever the temperature, a walk will aspect at some stage on a Saturday or Sunday.”

Most of the time, even so, she’s targeted on ambition for the company and its people today. “When I appear at my diary and see what is coming up through the 7 days which is what is foremost in my thoughts – to winner transform, to promote progress and to make the company function much better for its individuals and purchasers.”

Like every person, she suggests, not every little thing goes just to system on each working day. “But I’m privileged in currently being capable to simply come again, shut the doorway on that and say: you know what – tomorrow’s going to be a much better working day.”

It’s an outlook with which her prescient late father would have wisely concurred.