The History of Balfour+Manson LLP: the First 125 Years As Recalled By
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The History of Balfour+Manson LLP: the first 125 years As recalled by Ian Balfour Grandson of William Balfour, who founded the firm in 1887 History of Balfour+Manson LLP Index Page Section One Background to the Partnership (1855-1903) 2 Section Two Establishing the business (1904 to 1938) 12 Section Three World War Two and aftermath (1939 to 1949) 24 Section Four The first two mergers (1950 to 1959) 40 Section Five Specialization in the Sixties (1960 to 1969) 56 Section Six North and South, Up and Down (1970 to 1979) 71 Section Seven Rapid expansion (1980 to 1989) 88 Section Eight Queen Street to Hill Street (1990 to 1999) 109 Section Nine Into the Twenty-first Century (2000 to 2013) 131 Section Ten Public Appointments 147 Appendix One Background to the mergers 153 Appendix Two The present building 159 Appendix Three Fee-earners, 1877 to now 170 Section One - Background to the Partnership (1855-1903) Overview of 1855 to 1903 On 4th November 1887, a 32-year-old Orcadian, William Balfour, who had just completed a five-year apprenticeship, put up his plate as a Law Agent at 76 Queen Street in Edinburgh. The business prospered and sixteen years later, most of which were spent at 3 Queen Street, he invited a fellow Orcadian, his 29-year-old nephew, Peter Manson, to enter into partnership. Their early years, their apprenticeships and the legal scene in their adopted city at the end of the nineteenth century are the background to the formation of Balfour & Manson SSC in 1904. William Balfour (left) and Peter Manson (right), the first partners of the firm, were both originally from Orkney. William Balfour (1855-1939) Early years William Balfour was born in 1855 at the farm of Berriedale on Westray, the north- west-most of the Orkney Islands. His father, George, was a tenant farmer and his mother, Janet, came from the neighbouring island of Sanday. William, their fifth child, was educated at Westray Public School; although he also worked on the farm, he did so with a textbook resting on the handles of the plough, using his photographic memory to store away knowledge that would take him, at the age of eighteen, to a business career in the Central Belt of Scotland. 3 The farm of Berriedale on Westray. William Balfour maintained the Westray connection for the rest of his life, visiting it annually for both business and pleasure. He went first to Glasgow, studying for several years to become a patent agent. He then preferred a career in law and, moving to Edinburgh, he served a five-year apprenticeship from 1882 to 1887 in the front basement room of the two-partner firm of Duncan Smith & MacLaren at 62 Frederick Street. By coincidence, his son, Francis, acquired the right to purchase that room, along with the rest of the building, shortly after William Balfour’s death in 1939; by a further coincidence, his grandson, his namesake William, started his legal career in 1962 in the same room. By that time, generations of apprentices had scratched their names on the windows of the room – ostensibly to check whether stones in the rings they were handling in executries were genuine, because only real diamonds cut glass. Becoming a Law Agent The description Solicitor was not commonly used by lawyers in general practice until the Solicitors (Scotland) Act 1933 provided that ‘all Law Agents in Scotland are now to be known as Solicitors’. Between 1873 and 1933, there were two ways of becoming a Law Agent in Scotland. One was to obtain a Scottish University degree in law and to serve a three-year apprenticeship in an office. The other was to pass a preliminary examination in general knowledge, set by the Incorporated Society of Law Agents, and to serve a five-year apprenticeship. Both routes culminated in the Society’s final exams, followed by an application to the Court of Session for registration under the Law Agents (Scotland) Act 1873. See the note at the end of this section about the use of the words ‘Law Agent’ after 1933. William Balfour took the longer of the two routes; during the five-year apprenticeship he attended one class at the University of Edinburgh from 9 to 10 am and two more classes between 4 and 6 pm, with the time between spent in the office, without matriculating – as did the next two partners, Peter Manson and Francis Balfour. It was common in those days to attend lectures without matriculating and so without 4 graduating, either through lack of funds or through not regarding a degree as important for a Law Agent’s career. Attending lectures was important, because there were almost no student textbooks and no law library at the university, so listening and taking notes was the way to learn. One of the three compulsory papers in the Law Agents’ exams included translation from set books in Latin. William Balfour’s remarkable memory made up for his limited knowledge of the classics; to prepare for this exam, he memorized the text from books that set out the Latin on the left-hand page and an English translation on the facing page. When he came to a Latin passage in the exam paper, he mentally identified its location on the left-hand page and wrote down the corresponding English paragraph on the right-hand page. The exam questions were still in Latin when the writer studied Civil Law at the University of Edinburgh in 1953 – part of one of the exam papers is reproduced in section four. When William Balfour came to Edinburgh in 1882, there were three hundred horse-drawn tramcars and over one thousand horses. Advertisers realized the potential and tramcar destinations became difficult to spot among hoardings for Bovril and other groceries. Notary Public and SSC After passing his final exams and registering as a Law Agent, William Balfour put up his plate on 4th November 1887 outside a flat at 76 Queen Street – literally, a new brass plate, with his name on it as Law Agent. In 1887, there were 546 Law Agents in Edinburgh and Leith; many were single practitioners, or in partnerships of two or three; the largest firm had six partners. He moved temporarily in 1889-90 to a flat at 6 North Charlotte Street and then back to 76 Queen Street for three years. In 1893 he rented a flat at 3 Queen Street and practised from there for the next fifteen years, until 1908. The description of Law Agents as Solicitors was becoming more popular by the end of the nineteenth century, and the earliest extant document in the firm’s records is a public notice in the Edinburgh Gazette in 1897 signed by ‘William Balfour, Solicitor, 3 Queen Street, Edinburgh’. 5 He had applied immediately to become a Notary Public – for Notaries, see section ten; this entitled him to solemnize legal documents. In 1899 he joined the hundred- year-old Society of Solicitors in the Supreme Courts of Scotland and for the rest of his life he signed his letters as ‘William Balfour, SSC’, believing that the full title on his letterheads was more meaningful to the general public than the letters ‘WS’ – Writer to the Signet – the other, and more prestigious, legal society in Scotland. The SSC Society had recently, in 1892, completed the splendid new Solicitors’ Buildings, containing its Library and Hall, rising for six floors from the Cowgate and connected by a bridge to Parliament House. A hundred years later, the writer became the Secretary of the SSC Society, and a large part of his responsibility is keeping this venerable building in good repair and adapting it to modern heating, lighting and information technology. William Balfour’s office for fifteen years, between 1893 and 1908, was a flat at 3 Queen Street. This photograph shows No. 3 (left) and No. 4 (right) today. They are still leased out as offices, with the description: ‘Prominently situated overlooking the picturesque Queen Street Gardens, 3 & 4 Queen Street form part of a handsome terrace of stone and slate townhouses, conveniently located within Edinburgh’s Golden Rectangle. The accommodation provides open plan space and suites are available to lease on highly flexible lease terms.’ Court practice William Balfour soon built up a substantial Court practice, which included preparing cases and then instructing Counsel to appear in the two Supreme Courts in Scotland, the Court of Session for civil cases and the High Court of Justiciary for criminal cases. As explained in the next paragraph, a major part of his business was to act as Edinburgh agent for out-of-town colleagues, who were known as his country correspondents. As all important cases, which in those days included all actions of 6 divorce, came to the Supreme Courts, Edinburgh firms built up a network of informal but meaningful relationships with firms throughout Scotland. Reported Cases Cases that have significance for the wider legal profession are reported (published) in volumes known as Session Cases for Court of Session civil actions, Justiciary Cases (for High Court criminal cases) and Scots Law Times for both of these and for Sheriff Court cases also. The reports end with the names of the solicitors involved. WestLaw has digitalized these, and a search for William Balfour brings up twenty-two Supreme Court cases while he practiced on his own between 1887 and assuming Peter Manson as a partner in 1904. Half of these were Inner House cases in the Court of Session, because (as an appeal Court) that is where important points of principle are decided and considered worth reporting.