This month’s Member Spotlight features Stuart Clubb WS, a Society Council member and Partner and Joint Head of Shoosmith’s Dispute Resolution & Litigation team in Scotland.
Sarah Leask spoke to Stuart about being a commercial litigation lawyer, career highlights and his work in building and promoting a diverse and inclusive workplace.
What/who made you consider law as a career?
I remember first considering law as a career when I was having to choose my standard grade subjects at secondary school. In choosing them, the teachers said that we should think about what we wanted to do as a career when we were older but I had no real idea. I remember asking my parents and they said that I should ‘go for a career that pays well, and the best paid jobs are either a doctor or a lawyer’. ‘But’ they said, ‘you can’t be a doctor because you faint at the sight of blood, so you should be a lawyer’. They may or may not have also said that it would probably suit me as a job because I was also a fairly argumentative child! And that was it really, from that point onwards, my future career path was set in my mind, I was going to become a lawyer. So I won’t pretend that it was because I wanted to right the wrongs of society or fight injustice from an early age; no, it was because my parents wanted me to get a job that paid well and because I was squeamish at the sight of blood!
You are a Partner and Joint Head of Shoosmith’s Dispute Resolution & Litigation team in Scotland and lead the team’s Scottish commercial litigation practice. Please tell us about your role and what a typical week looks like?
As a commercial litigation lawyer, I advise clients on a wide range of commercial disputes, including corporate, contractual, and property related disputes, so there is a real variety to my litigation practice. A large part of my week is therefore spent meeting with clients, drafting pleadings, consulting and liaising with counsel, and preparing for cases and upcoming hearings. I also have a specialism in insolvency and restructuring, with a particular focus on contentious insolvency matters, and I regularly advise insolvency practitioners, companies, and directors on all aspects of insolvency law.
Helping build and promote a diverse and inclusive workplace here at Shoosmiths is also very important to me and therefore as well as the daily legal work I also sit on the committee for our PROUD (LGBTQ+) network which aims to raise awareness and visibility of LGBTQ+ issues across the firm and help contribute to the firm’s inclusive culture. I am also a member of the firm’s social mobility working group, which aims to boost social mobility both within the firm and across the UK. As both an out gay man, and the first of my family to go to University, both of these roles and initiatives are incredibly important to me on a personal level.
Please tell us about your career highlights, to date?
In 2008, I won Rising Star of the Year at the Scottish Legal Awards, which was also the same year that I qualified as a Solicitor Advocate with rights of audience in the Court of Session and the Supreme Court. It was also the same year that I was awarded WS Signet Accreditation in Commercial Litigation, so there were quite a number of career highlights in 2008! Being made a partner at HBJ Gateley (now Addleshaw Goddard) in 2012 was also an obvious career highlight. More recently, I was very proud to be appointed as Chair of the Edinburgh Insolvency Discussion Group in January 2024, which is a key knowledge sharing and networking group for insolvency professionals in and around Edinburgh.
How did you first come to hear about the WS Society and what made you want to become a member?
I first became aware of the WS Society when I attended a professional competence course at the Signet Library as part of my traineeship back in 2002. At that early stage in my career I remember being extremely impressed by the quality and the extent of the books and resources which were available to members as well as the obvious impressive surroundings of the Signet Library itself. After qualification, I moved from Aberdeen to Edinburgh and my relationship with the WS Society grew and continued. In 2008, I was one of the first solicitors to sit the Signet Accreditation programme and become WS Society Signet Accredited in commercial litigation. In 2018, after attending the prestigious WS Society Commercial Dispute Resolution Conference for many years, I was asked to present at the Conference, which I did again in 2021. Becoming a WS member in 2021 therefore seemed the natural next step in my professional relationship with the WS Society which started back when I was a trainee almost twenty years earlier.
What would you say to any lawyer considering WS membership?
I would encourage any lawyer considering WS membership to join. I can attest first hand to the important role which the WS Society has played, and continues to play, in my career to date. The Society really does offer something for everyone – whether that’s their leading programme of CPD events and conferences, the networking opportunities, or the extensive resources available in the Signet Library, the benefits continue to grow and evolve.