Tag: Book

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Women in Law

FIRST: Writing Women In Law Into History

FIRST 100 Years of Women in law - book review

On Monday 23rd December 2019, we celebrate the centenary of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919, which paved the way for women to become professionals in the UK. The First 100 Years project is the national campaign celebrating this centenary, focusing primarily on the progression of women in the legal profession since 1919. First 100 Years has been celebrating this centenary throughout this year in many ways, one of its latest being the newly released FIRST: 100 Years of Women in Law, which is the first book of its kind telling the story of women in law throughout the last 100 years in an accessible and informative way.

About First 100 Years

Set up in 2015 by Obelisk Support CEO Dana Denis-Smith, the First 100 Years project has been building an archive to tell the previously untold stories of the pioneering women who made history in the legal profession. From the first female solicitor, Madge Easton Anderson, in 1920, to Elizabeth Lane, who was the first woman appointed a County Court judge and then the first woman appointed to the High Court, right up to the present day with the first female President of the Supreme Court, Lady Hale, and future firsts, like future president of the Law Society I. Stephanie Boyce, who will become the first President from a BAME background in 2021.

First 100 Years is a multimedia project, telling the history of women in law in many ways to ensure as many people as possible can learn about the stories in a way that suits them; from the filmed biographical interviews, a podcast series, a unique music commission to an artwork commission for the Supreme Court, and now a book, there is something for everyone to learn about the inspiring female pioneers that shaped the profession today. The purpose of the project is not just to understand the history of women in law, but to use this to provide the context for promoting further gender equality in the profession, by assessing progress so far and how far we still have to go.

FIRST

FIRST: 100 Years of Women in Law seeks to capture the lives of female pioneers in law, past and present, to ensure we do not lose the stories of these incredible women. It does so following the format of the First 100 Years timeline, podcast series and exhibition, decade-by-decade, delving into the broader themes of each decade, including the wider historical context that impacted women’s place in the profession. It also goes further into the many stories of the individual women including biographical information and both archival and modern day pictures of the pioneers, making it a highly informative and entertaining read.

Lucinda Acland, a long-term volunteer on the project and the host of the First 100 Years Podcast series, and Katie Broomfield, an academic in the field and a champion of the project, have brought together archival material, material produced by the project through the video and podcast interviews and their own research to create this book. FIRST is the product of over five years’ worth of efforts in building the archive, which was not an easy task.

The project’s founder, Dana Denis-Smith, often refers to the fact that what she thought would be a history project, turned into an “archaeological dig” to unearth the stories because women’s achievements often go unacknowledged and their stories rarely told, so finding out many of the stories took a lot of work. The writing of the book itself, however, was done in a very short amount of time. It was originally not intended to be released until 2020 but due to an incredible amount of interest, the task was brought forward and the authors got it done in a matter of months in time for the centenary celebrations, and we are so pleased they did as it has been a huge success!

There was a hotly contested debate around the title, from the authors, publishers, editors, proof readers and the First 100 Years team. Being the first of its kind, it was important to ensure the title hit the correct tone. It had to transcend the purely feminist literature section of a library and be a credible history book in its own right, irrespective of the fact it featured women. In the end, it was actually The Attic editor Laure Latham who came up with the simple yet effective title: FIRST: 100 Years of Women in Law. It captured the essence of the project, with the name of the project in the title, but also the simple word “FIRST” alluded to the women featured as “firsts” in various ways, and is also signifying that there are many achievements for women in law to come – this is just the beginning.

Why is FIRST so important?

Ultimately, women need to understand their history to be able to place themselves within it. It has become apparent to the First 100 Years team over the past few years that, understandably, people could not accurately estimate how long women have been in the profession, or have known the many anecdotes that have since been shared, such as not being allowed to wear trousers in the courtroom, having no female lavatory facilities or women frequently being asked to make the tea in meetings. It is only by understanding the background can we both recognise how far we have come and make sure we fight to ensure history does not repeat itself. As Baroness Kennedy says in her testimonial of the book, “this is a vital and stunning piece of our history…the absence of women in the system of law was a gross impediment to justice” and we must ensure women’s place in the profession is cemented.

The Next 100 Years

As The Secret Barrister says in their testimonial of the book, “[FIRST] offers not only a unique celebration of the progress achieved by women in the law, but a vital reminder of how much work there still is to do”. Despite the progress of the last 100 years, there are still barriers to be broken and progress to be made, and there are plenty of plans in the works for The Next Hundred Years! You can get involved by following us on social media @First100Years and @Next100Years_, checking out all the many resources we have on our website www.first100years.org.uk and contacting us at [email protected].

Make sure to get your copy of the book by going to www.first100years.org.uk/our-new-book/

Here’s to the Next 100 Years!

Categories
Making Work, Work

Book Review | Humans As a Service: The Promise and Perils of Work in the Gig Economy

Jeremias Prassl photographed by Abi Adams

When discussing the future of work, technology always comes up as the main element or facilitator, humans coming in as an afterthought. What the gig economy has done for our current work landscape, so far, is normalise cheap labour on demand and the work precarity that comes with it.

Lawyers of course are no strangers to the gig economy, with cheap labour platforms offering unregulated legal services from freelance lawyers. And both a lawyers and as members of wider society, it is our duty to question any situation that worsens workers’ rights. At Obelisk Support, we believe in “Human First” and a new book, Humans As A Service: The Promise and Perils of Work in the Gig Economy, made us reflect in the gig economy’s impact on innovation and employment in the modern age. In the book and during a chat with The Attic, Jeremias Prassl analyses the gig economy with a focus on the workers who actually labour in the gig workforce.

Disruptive Innovation

An Eversheds survey which focused on young lawyers and their views on the legal sector highlighted that these up-and-coming professionals are looking for a better work-life balance and concluded that they feel the traditional career path in law is now out of step with the 21st century.

Proponents of the sharing economy argue that society reaps major benefits from growth driven by platform’s innovative disruption of existing business models. Instead of boring 9-to-5 lives, gig workers enjoy the exhilarating challenges and vast financial rewards of entrepreneurship.

That may be true but the danger lies in platforms denying workers’ employment status even if their gig lawyers aren’t de facto independent. Jeremias agrees: ” A level playing field in employment massively supports innovation, they inherently go hand in hand. A world where there is no protection for employees stifles innovation. And this is where historical examples come into play – there is the fascinating example of Yorkshire mill owners in the 19th century who were complaining to the House of Lords that they could not get a return on investment on new spinning technology, because competitors were still using children in home for cheap labour. There actually needs to be a level playing level playing field for industries to move forward and innovation to thrive.”

Autonomy

In explaining how gig economy enterprises work, Jeremias Prassl shows that the companies running the platforms do retain control, often in a subtle manner. What is presented as the business of matching is in fact, a unilateral subjective view of a curated platform in the interest of the company.

“Gig-economy operators accurately shape the entire transaction by means of close control over their workforce, from setting terms and conditions and checking relevant qualifications, to insuring proper performance and payment… User ratings also provide quality control and feedback, and digital payment systems render the entire transaction cashless.”

The anonymous rating system ensures tight control over every aspect of work and service delivery, as well as algorithms disclosing only part of the job descriptions, hence distorting the pretence of true entrepreneurship. If you don’t know what you are signing up for, how can you be independent? That’s where the problems we have started to see in terms of the gig economy and flexible working lie, says Jeremias. “We should recognise that flexibility can be extremely useful for life and being able to choose when and how much we work, but also bear in mind that flexibility in some circumstances can be very one sided. Where flexibility is one sided, and people don’t have the choice of the work they want, that becomes insecurity. A successful plumber growing their independent business will have a very different experience to someone signed up to a platform who is struggling to put together a living.”

Why It Matters

Cheap work and using idle assets should be in everybody’s interests but as seen before, it also creates a peculiar precarity that makes workers work longer hours for less money, therefore making them shoulder the economic risk of a multilateral task.

Is this fair?

No.

Is this bad?

Not necessarily.

It all depends on the regulatory framework. What are the challenges of applying regulation to such a global and heterogenic employment model? “The long term challenges that exist are in social security systems of different countries, and in general legal protections that are still designed round stable permanent employment relationships”, says Jeremias. “That will need to be rethought. Just as important are tax laws and consumer protection care and liability: all these things are designed around employment relationships that we are moving away from, and that will be a challenge for different regulatory models.”

Sustainable Gig Working Solutions

Everybody should have the right to work differently, at unconventional hours or from non-office places. That’s the very definition of flexible work, one of a few directions the gig economy could take if done right.

To become a sustainable work model for society, the gig economy would also benefit from legislations recognising employment rights for gig workers, even in odd situations with multiple employers. Assuming that this status is recognised, gig workers would still have to contend with non-transparent rating algorithms from the platforms they work with. In his book, Prassl suggests a concept of “portable ratings” that would “empower workers to follow up on grievances and negotiate for better conditions -or to move on to a different platform.”

Last but not least, without collective representation, gig workers cannot attain the level of bargaining power they are due, and cannot negotiate their work conditions. Effectively, the lack of a united voice weakens their position.

Consumer Protection

While most of Prassl’s book discusses the fate of gig workers, consumers are not left out either. The rights of clients are not protected in cases of grievances as platforms often treat customers no differently from their workers, “refusing to step in and take responsibility.”

Regulating the gig economy by granting employment status to workers would work in favour of clients as they would be covered by the responsibility an employer incurs for the actions of its employees in the course of business.

Is the Gig Economy the Way Forward?

Based on the book’s premises, one wouldn’t quickly assume that Prassl agrees with the very concept of gig economy and platforms. However at the end of the day, Jeremias Prassl is a socially-minded liberal. “Ensuring the full application of employment law is crucial if we want to make the gig economy work for all,” he writes.

Touted as a great innovation for workers, the gig economy has enriched platforms and spread precarious work to a population that doesn’t have much choice. If indeed the gig economy is a transitional phase before these jobs are automated or taken over by AI, including legal discovery and due diligence in the legal world, the gig economy should benefit to all involved until then.

“We are certainly seeing [the gig economy] becoming a larger part of industries like transport, healthcare, and law” says Jeremias. “I think it is and will continue to be an important component in employment but to what extent it is the way of the future, for now I can’t say.”

The Case of Freelance Lawyers

As providers of legal services at Obelisk Support, we only work with freelance lawyers. Are they part of the gig economy? No, as experienced professionals, they carry out complex tasks independently for our clients and choose to work as freelance lawyers for personal reasons. Rare are the lawyers who, once they’ve carved out a successful freelance lawyering career, want to go back to a traditional 9-to-5. In that respect, what we bring to the industry is real positive change in the way these lawyers work.

Much positive change still needs to happen in the legal profession but if one thing is sure, it’s that the gig economy, as described in Humans as a Service… is not a concern. Irreversibly, legal tech has already changed the legal landscape for low-skilled legal tasks. All we need to do – and it’s a big ask – is to learn how to work with technology while growing our economy and protecting rights and liberties. This is a wider discussion on the ethics of artificial intelligence that we welcome with open minds.

 

Whether you are an employment lawyer interested in the legal context, if you are or are thinking of taking on flexible gig employment, or are someone who is simply fascinated by the future of work, there is plenty of insight in Humans As A Service to pique your interest. Print copies of the book are available from Oxford University Press.

 

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Trending Women in Law

Podcast #1: Interview with Laura Montgomery, Space Lawyer and Science Fiction Writer

Space Lawyer and Science Fiction Writer

Lawyers have long had a strong connection with literature, with many famous and prolific authors having led a previous life in the legal industry. So to celebrate World Book Day 2018 with a legal twist, Obelisk Support decided to track down a practising lawyer who is also carving out a career as a published author. Laura Montgomery is an American space lawyer and she very kindly accepted to share her thoughts on her work as a space lawyer and as a science fiction writer.

Transcript

I’m your host, Laure Latham, and today, I’m speaking with Laura Montgomery, a spacer lawyer and science fiction author whose latest book, Mercenary Calling, was recently published in January.

The Attic (TA): Laura, thank you so much for joining us.

Laura Montgomery (LM): Oh, thank you Laure. It’s a pleasure to be here.

On Being a Space Lawyer

TA: Well, I’m very excited. It’s not every day that I speak to a space lawyer. I would like to start the interview with you telling us a bit about your career as a space lawyer…

LM: Well, sure. I’ve been practicing for quite a number of years, almost three decades now. I started out in private practice at a law firm in Washington DC where I did regulatory work. Then the job came open for space lawyer with the Department of Transportation and I went over and interviewed, and it is my firm conviction that I got the job because I went to the Air and Space Museum afterwards and touched the moon rock for good luck! We all got moved into the Federal Aviation Administration, the FAA, after a couple of years there, and that is where I worked for 22 years. The FAA regulates launch and re-entry and the operation of what is commonly known as space ports. I had a great time. I worked on human space light regulations, launch safety regulations, lightning rules, explosive siting, it’s really thrilling even though some of it is grindingly dull! It was a lot of fun.

Now I’ve set up my own shop. I left the FAA about a year and a half ago and I’ve testified to Congress a couple of times, to the Space subcommittees in the House and the Senate and I do different types of legal work, all space related, and now I’m teaching a seminar in Space Law at Catholic University’s Law School.

On Writing Science Fiction

TA: Now, I’m looking at your recent book, Mercenary Calling. I’m not going to give out any spoilers to your future readers but it’s like Star Trek meets Suits, basically.  Because it’s a lot of science fiction interaction. It’s about discovering a new planet that’s livable for humans, it’s about settling on the planet and all the legal implications that it can have for the human race. Tell us why you wanted to write this book and why, in general, you are writing science fiction?

LM: Sure. I’ve been reading science fiction since I was 13. I’ve always loved the outer space books and the thought that we could go to amazing places. When I read these books, I started out with Robert Heinlein, C. J. Cherry and others, I always wondered how people on Earth were reacting to things. You know, let’s say there was an alien invasion at the edge of the solar system. Well, in the books, Earth always mobilises really fast but I’m sure that we would squabble about it first. My books are more “ground based” I call them because there’s going to be a lot of conflict here in dealing with outer space. I’ve certainly seen a lot of that in my own career. The stories that pop into my head are always stories about what’s going on here. Since I’m a lawyer and I know the law, I do know a bit of space law, I tend to veer in that direction. With Mercenary Calling, I think that if someone left a settlement and it was unclear whether it was authorised or not, they might come back and be in trouble. So my hero, my lawyer hero Calvin Tondini, has a new client. A starship captain is charged with mutiny for leaving this settlement behind. He has to defend her, and she’s he’s got a mind of her own. There’s a lot about the attorney client relationship, as well as the legal issues. Some of my favorite clients have been difficult! I think of one, I really admired her, and she was a handful too. It was a fun book to write and since I know the law and I know what it’s like to be a lawyer, so I felt free to have my frivolous moments with the book.  

One of themes in the book is what we currently call planetary protection. Are we going to allow microbes and Earth germs to contaminate Mars when we’re trying to figure out if it has life there? Also, we want to let people go, so those are policy issues that need to be balanced. I didn’t even mean to raise it, but the themes played out in Mercenary Calling. There’s a reason there is alien corn on the cover.   

On Combining Professional life and Creative Life

TA: I know. It took me a while to figure out but I found out! You’ve told us that space was your field, there’s a lot of space law woven into the book. Tell us how your professional life influences your creative life.

LM: It’s certainly given me a lot of ideas. There’s always been prizes offered in real life for great innovations, going back to the Longitude prize back when, I think it was the 18th century, when they were having trouble navigating and sailing because they couldn’t figure out the longitude, so a prize was offered, and it took decades to win. Then there was the prize that Charles Lindbergh won for crossing the Atlantic or, more recently, in the space field, the X Prize was offered to anyone who could develop their own launch technology to fly to space twice on a re-usable rocket within two weeks with the capacity to take three people. That was a big deal for us at the FAA because we had a lot of people come in wanting licenses. It was won by Spaceship 1 of Scaled Composites, which was the company that flies Spaceship 1, using Paul Allen of Microsoft’s money – I think they spent $20 million to win $10 million. Now they have licensed the technology to Virgin and formed Virgin Galactic. This sort of prize atmosphere in my daily life is what gave me the idea for Manx Prize, where our heroine, an engineer, is trying to win a prize of $50 million in gold, decades from now, for bringing in pieces of orbital debris. Because space junk is a real problem up there. I think that sort of thing had a real influence on some of my plots. I had Charlotte Fisher in my head, I just didn’t know what she was doing and then one day I said ‘oh, she’s trying to win a prize!’ I’ve already talked about the planetary protection issues, mentioned in Mercenary Calling. I just wrote a short story that’s sitting in a magazine, begging to be rejected. A lot of the legal issues in that, even though it’s about sending a piece of art to Mars, come from [our] weekly phone calls with NASA trying to work out our issues with astronauts going up on launches that the FAA licenses and there were lots of legal issues with that. As I wrote this short story, I just kept giggling because I kept putting in things that were from the government astronaut legal interpretation, from this and from that, and I’m definitely sending that story to my NASA friends when it comes out, they’ll recognise elements! There’s plenty of what we writers call reader cookies for a few folks. I’d say that I use a lot of both law and policy and just factual stuff in my writing. I knew how to research my science fiction novel, my orbital debris one, because I knew a lot about launch and re-entry but I didn’t know a lot about putting stuff on orbit. I kind of knew how to look it up. It’s been really helpful for my creative writing to have done all this work in the field even though I’m not an engineer.   

On the Writer’s Creative Process

TA: Do you usually start with a legal idea, an anecdote or something else? Would you describe your creative process to us?

LM:  Giving it the name process is perhaps too much credit: I have these things pop into my head. I don’t sit down and think, oh, I’m going to write a story, what should it be about. I don’t come up with a list. I have either a character or the idea. Sometimes, I marry them up. I have some sort of sarcastic comment that I’m thinking about, ‘this is ridiculous, what if someone really did?’ And then I have a story. Often it’s my critical side at work, and then it takes off. In the writing field, we have these two terms, the plotter and the pantser. There are people who outline their stories and people who write by the seat of their pants.  Even though I’m a lawyer who does a lot of outlining in terms of figuring out the logic of my arguments, turns out that on the creative side, I’m a pantser! I learned not to start things if I don’t know how they end but a lot of the times I write to find out what happens next, and the logic just comes from the writing of it, and then I have to sometimes go back and rip things out. The other thing is, when you do your first draft, I make sure my inner editor is turned off.  I do not worry about phrasing and beautiful writing, I worry about that later. Really, you need to find out what’s going to happen and you need to write it, and then you can edit and fix it later. I know the end, I know the beginning, and I maybe know two things that happen in the middle. The rest of it, I find out as I go along. It’s an adventure.

TA: It sounds like it, it sounds very organic.

LM: It is. You know, I write genre fiction; I write science fiction. When you do that, you need a lot of conflict, you need a strong plot and things have to happen. There’s a part of me that’s a little bit conscious of that. You can’t just write beautiful descriptions for pages and pages. I get bored and I’m sure my readers would get bored. You’ve got to weave things in.  

On Making Time to Write

TA: It’s your fifth book so when you published your first book, you were working at the FAA. I’m assuming you must have been very busy. How, as a lawyer, do you make time to write?

LM: Well, as a lawyer, I live by deadlines. Initially, I was like ok, I’m going to write a paragraph every night. That takes forever. You just can’t write a paragraph every night. I came across a book called No Plot, No Problem and it talked about National Novel Writing Month, which turned out to be wonderful for me. Every November, all these people across the entire world sit down and try to write a 50,000-word novel. You sign up online, input your word count at the end of the day, and that’s where I learned to kill the inner editor. You just don’t worry. If it’s crazy, ok. You have to write 1,600 words a day. You have to write more than that because in America, we have Thanksgiving and you know that you’re not going to get a lot done over that weekend, so I aim for 2,000 words a day. The first year I did it, I only wrote 6,000 words in the month of November but that taught me that November is magical, because it has the deadline. The next year, I wrote a lot more. My first book took me five years to finish with this really silly approach but then I learned that you can write a lot in a day, so now I write 10 words at breakfast, because that gets your brain working, and then after lunch I usually write 1,000 words, especially now that I’m gone from the FAA, but I used to write 10 words at breakfast or more, then 700 to 1,000 words after lunch and another 1,000 after dinner. That’s what you do first, before doing everything else you’re supposed to do.

TA: I like the way you describe it, it makes total sense. Write early in the morning and then just keep going.  

LM: Right, because your back brain will work at little problems, while you are doing other things so when you eat your lunch in November, you just sit down and write. And you don’t have lunch with friends. Not in November. Then it’s training for the rest of the year and I now can write outside of November, but November was really key for me so if someone’s trying to figure out how to write., start gathering your thoughts and ideas, do your research now and then in November, that’s it. I mean, by December 5th, I had nothing left to say, so I knew that November really counted because it was a deadline. And deadlines are magical!

On Your Favourite Part of Writing a Book

TA: What’s your favourite part of writing the book?

LM: I love writing the beginning, even though I usually go change it later. The beginning is just so full of possibilities. And then, as for the drafting, I like the drafting. The editing, not quite as much and I’m sort of dreading the process. You’re like, ‘oh but people will want to know that’, but ‘oh but nothing’s happening here, so it has to go’ your editor says. Fine. You cut it out. It wasn’t really a scene. It was just a lot of people saying stuff, you know, without having any sort of integral role in the plot. It was interesting to me when I wrote it and it helped me get through not knowing what’s happening next. So, drafting is the most fun!

On Your Current Reading List

TA: What kind of books are you reading right now?

LM: I jump back and forth between historical fiction and science fiction. Right now, I’m reading Bernard Cornwell’s Winter King, which is a retelling of the Arthurian legend and I’m loving it. I think Bernard Cornwell’s a wonderful writer. It’s a very vivid, evocative book that immerses you in this very different alien world of Old England, post-Roman England. It’s cool. I think I like very alien settings and that’s part of why I like science fiction, but historical fiction gives you that too.

On Receiving Work Offers from Readers

TA: Since you write about space, have you ever had job offers from readers?

LM: The closest I’ve come is that a physicist from Boeing, who’s now at a think tank or a consulting group, has asked me to co-author an article with him on orbital debris remediation, offering a prize for it. He loved my book Manx Prize. He’s got a fellow who’s going to be doing all the engineering questions, describing the problem on orbit, and then I’ll be doing the legal issues. It’s not a job offer but it’s interesting.

TA: Pretty exciting. Is it published or is it going to be published?

LM: It’s being written right now, so we’re hoping it’ll be published this summer. I think it’s going into a European space journal.

Words of Advice to Aspiring Lawyer Authors  

TA: Last question for aspiring lawyer authors, and I’m sure there are lots of them out there – what would you say to them, some words of advice?

LM:  Oh, boy. I would say that whatever you’re doing in the legal field, it will become grist for your mill later. Go ahead. Take it all in. Learn everything you can. If you’re a litigator, you’re going to have exciting courtroom drama. If you are a regulatory attorney like I am, learn your industry. People love reading books where they actually learn stuff and they feel like they are being told about a world by someone who knows. It’s good to be a lawyer. It’s good to be many different things.  Being a lawyer, you can learn so much about your clients issues and concerns and you can use it. The other thing I’ll suggest, and it’s something that was recommended to me by one of my mentors, science fiction writer Sarah Hoyt. She always recommends that people read Dwight Swain’s Techniques of the Selling Writer. If you’re an avid reader, like I am, everything in it is something you recognise, from books you like. He talks about structural issues, how the book has to start when something changes. The beginning is over when someone makes a decision. And you’re like, ‘Oh, I recognise these things’ and it really helps you understand how a book is put together, which is sort of a mystery even if you’ve read thousands and thousands of books like I have. He breaks it down and articulates it and you’re like, now I know how I’m supposed to do it. It’s not happenstance. That worked on me, as a reader. It’s all about the craft [of writing] and there’s lots of books about the craft  but you finish them just as puzzled as you were when you started. This one is good.

TA: That was very interesting and I did learn lots of things today. Thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us today. I wish you all the best with your future writings. 

Laura Montgomery practices space law. She also writes science fiction with a bourgeois, legal slant. Her most recent book, MERCENARY CALLING, is a tale of exoplanets, terrorists, and lawyers. She also writes space opera in her WAKING LATE series. Her author site is at lauramontgomery.com.

On the legal side, Laura teaches space law at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law. In her private practice she specializes in regulatory space law, with an emphasis on commercial space transportation and the Outer Space Treaties. She testified last year to the space subcommittees of the House and Senate on matters of regulation and international obligation. She writes and edits the space law blog GroundBasedSpaceMatters.com.

Laura spent over two decades with the Federal Aviation Administration. She served as the manager of the Space Law Branch in the FAA’s Office of the Chief Counsel. Some of her rulemakings included human space flight, explosive siting, launch and launch site licensing and safety, and lightning protection. She addressed a wide range of issues, from amateur rockets, to sea launch, to space balloons.

Highlights from Ms. Montgomery’s time at the FAA include her representation of the FAA at the United Nation’s legal subcommittee of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, her service as chair to an inter-agency working group on space property rights at the request of the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the White House, and testimony to Congress on the FAA’s interpretation of the Commercial Space Launch Act. Before working for the government, she was in private practice in Washington, DC, where she specialized in telecommunications, administrative law, and appellate work. She received her law degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and her undergraduate degree with honors from the University of Virginia.

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The Legal Update

Helen Tse on Doing Business after Brexit

At Obelisk Support, we regularly get requests from clients to assist them in Brexit-related matters, whether it’s in the banking industry or regarding general commercial law. As Brexit is still very much a shifting concept, its legal implications are not as clear-cut as businesses would like them to be. That’s why we were very excited when we learned that Helen Tse, lawyer at Clarke Willmott, was working on a book about doing business after Brexit, featuring a range of experts in the most common legal fields affecting professionals in the U.K. Finally, a book that tells you how Brexit could affect your business.

We are very proud that Obelisk Support CEO, Dana Denis-Smith, and her husband, John Denis-Smith, both contributed a chapter in this book, each in their area of expertise. To get the inside scoop, we caught up with Helen Tse on the legal implications of doing business after Brexit.

#1 How did you come to spearhead this project?

In June 2016, before the referendum, nobody envisaged that Brexit would happen and when it did, a slight panic occurred as to what would happen. As a lot of my clients were calling to know what was going to happen for them with Brexit regarding their property or their business, I pitched the idea of this book to Bloomsbury and they were interested.

I started writing at Christmas time in 2016, because there wasn’t much that we could write until we knew a bit more. To get a steer as to what the government would envisage Brexit to be, I contacted the Brexit department (Department for Exiting the European Union) led by David Davis. This book is based on their guidelines.

#2 Who is the book for?

It is for fellow lawyers, anybody in the professional services sphere who has to advise on Brexit issues, as well as companies, SMEs, high net worth individuals, and anybody with an interest in business. It even features a section by Nigel Barratt that talks about the landscape for investor from abroad. We see Brexit as an opportunity to invest in the UK, as it’s 20% cheaper. The sterling has devalued, therefore buying a property in the UK is a great opportunity.

#3 How did you structure this book and why?

Initially, it was going to be purely an academic piece on leading lawyers from different specialist areas on how they think the law will change. But then, I thought that it would be good to have a business section and created a section on thought-leadership. How might business owners envisage that Brexit would impact their business? So the book is two-part, academic on one hand and pragmatic businesslike on the other.

Doing business after Brexit is such a broad topic that you’ll never be able to cover the whole range of topics, but from a business perspective you can address employment, corporate, commercial, property, corporate finance, and all things that you need to make the business flow. What this book won’t say is how individuals who have a property in Spain will be affected. This is a book strictly about business.

#4 Each one of the book’s chapters is written by a different legal expert. What was the biggest challenge about coordinating these contributors?

The book features about 30 contributors. There are a lot of thought leaders in the frame. My main challenge was to get everybody to deliver on time and then edit contributions to get a constant flow about everything. That took all my weekends, as the book is 400 pages long. Given everybody’s busy schedules, there were slight delays so that impacted my schedule too but we got the job done.

#5 Did anything surprise you in the book?

Looking at Brexit is little bit like the ostrich approach. Nobody knows what to do, so you assume that it’s not going to happen. For instance, if repatriation happened, what would happen to the business? If you’re a UK business getting goods abroad, what would happen? On a business level, a lot of businesses still don’t know what to do or what’s going to happen. This book is very timely and will be a great mind map for many companies and professionals.

The book looks at worst-case scenarios. That was surprising to me, but it was necessary to guide business owners. 

#6 Do you deal with similar issues at work?

I specialise in M&A and right before the referendum, we had a few transactions that had come to terms. The price had been agreed. Payment terms had been agreed. It was basically good to go, except that Brexit happened.

After the referendum, did the buyers still want to go ahead with the transactions? Some buyers went ahead but others decided to wait and see, they did not wish to proceed with the acquisition. There was nothing wrong with the company, but the parties were just nervous about what would happen and the economic uncertainty.

I’ll give you a Lloyds bank statistic that appears in the book. On the day of the referendum, they stopped 100% of all mortgage applications. That’s how much uncertainty can impact a business and that’s why it was important to write this book.

#7 How did you guide your authors and where did you draw a line?

From a book standpoint, we had very clear guidelines with the publisher at Bloomsbury regarding drafting style, the number of words or how each contributor should focus on their particular area of law. Legally, though, we instructed that all authors deal with a hard Brexit situation. It makes it much more feasible for a contributor to give their piece.

#8 Did writing the book change your view on Brexit?

Personally, I was not for Brexit but we are where we are. We do the best of the situation that is being given. I remain very pragmatic and as a lawyer, want to make sure that my clients are protected. It really remains to be seen whether Brexit was a good decision or not but as lawyers, we need to be flexible and adapt.

Let’s take the example of a manufacturer who buys his supplies as raw materials coming from Germany. With the post-Brexit currency changes, the supplies might not be affordable anymore. Under a normal contract, you can only terminate for force majeure or frustration. Instead, we’re inserting Brexit clauses into contracts. The book gives you clauses to think about. They haven’t been drafted by anybody yet and we are definitely  leading the way in that respect.  However until Brexit has happened, we cannot have a clear view of what these templates could be.

#9 What online resources would you recommend to lawyers and general counsels to keep up to date with Brexit legal issues?

First, I would say download the kindle version of this book to have it handy. As far as UK resources, I really like Brexit & Law as well as PLC and LexisNexis.

#10 What next?

I get my weekend back! Of course, we’re going to do a presentation of the book on September 20 in Manchester. All the details are here.

About Helen Tse

Helen Tse is the first port of call for SME companies, high net worth individuals and entrepreneurs regarding corporate and commercial law matters. Helen herself is an entrepreneur, a published author and the recipient of the coveted MBE from Her Majesty The Queen in 2014.

A graduate in Law from Cambridge University with a professional career has included Clifford Chance, London & Hong Kong, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Walkers in the Cayman Islands, Helen Tse is highly sought after and an authority in the world of business. Her combination of legal and business acumen stands her heads and shoulders above her peers.