A zest for life
Council member Paul Keane is still energised about the future of the legal profession, and his enthusiasm is infectious, as Mary Hallissey discovers
“The joy of being a lawyer is when someone comes in and you help them to clear their minds. And they leave the office and say, ‘I feel better now’. That’s just wonderful when that happens.”
After a long career at Reddy Charlton, Paul Keane is now a consultant to the firm and has the time to pursue his lifelong interest in languages, recently spending some weeks in Bologna improving his Italian.
Reflecting on his working life, he mentions his brief period in the public sector working for the Department of Industry and Commerce as an administrative officer, which was “brimful of talented people who went on to achieve great things”.
“I have great regard for the civil service and no time for lazy jokes about it,” he says.
C’est la vie
That career with Reddy Charlton has had remarkable longevity, though he does ponder the ‘what-ifs’ of choosing a Paris legal firm, given his linguistic ability.
“I had several great teachers during my time in school – a Brother Burke, who taught French, was an inspirational teacher. For the first three months he didn’t go to the book at all, we just spoke French.
“The good effects of a great teacher are a bit like the tail of a comet. Wherever he went, good things happened. Obviously, when teachers are bad, there can be a similar impact. Children will leap forward under the influence of a good teacher.”
With his wife and other family members working as teachers, Paul has deep respect for that profession.
Talent spotter
The regard for the importance of education seems to have rubbed off on him, too. As a managing partner at Reddy Charlton, he enjoyed identifying people with talent and giving them the opportunity to flourish.
“I’m proud of the way that I mentored and brought on young people, including the current leadership generation of my own firm,” he says.
He reflects – ruefully – that it wasn’t so nice, having nourished and flourished junior talent, to then watch them leave.
“It’s part of modern life, that churn. There are so many opportunities and [young lawyers] feel that they ought to, or must, take these chances, not to be in the same place all the time.”
When his wife Siobhán retired as a principal teacher, she took up patchwork quilting, as well as playing in a cello orchestra. His son is a full-time potter, so the creative streak runs deep in the family.
He expresses gratitude for his wife’s support and the space she provided for his career.
Down on the farm
Paul grew up in Blakestown, Co Dublin, where his family ran a small farm with turkeys and chickens and cultivated fruit and vegetable gardens.
He attended school at St Vincent’s in Glasnevin and retains an involvement in the school’s basketball club as announcer and commentator.
He has kept up beekeeping, a hobby that goes back to his childhood on the land.
His father and mother’s dedication to education, despite the odds, had an impact on his family’s trajectory, with all three offspring attending Trinity.
“My father was a civil servant, a man of great energy. He built up the farm in the 1950s at a time when it was quite remote. We only had four acres, but a quarter of an acre was in vegetables or fruit. We had two reasonably sized glasshouses, a turkey house, and lawns, of course, which were a curse to cut. And we had cattle. My father was a countryman from Roscommon with its tradition of fattening cattle.
“He was an inspector in the Land Commission, having gone in at a very junior level. He did not have the benefit of third-level education, and that held him back. He was a very intelligent man, a man who loved languages, and always liked to find out what the root of a word was.”
The idea of a university
“They were really determined that we should get an education. I remember my father taking me for a walk and him saying to me that if you put the work in and get your place in university, the money would be there to pay for it. And he did it for all three of us.
“If you consider it from his perspective, for all sorts of cultural, religious and economic reasons, it would have been impossible. So, it was an extraordinary achievement on their part… the encouraging atmosphere.”
Paul was good at debating and so chose law and flourished in Trinity, where civil-rights activist Kadar Asmal was a formative influence.
Later in life, Paul worked closely with late USIT founder Gordon Colleary, a non-lawyer, and they laboured together on property deals in Temple Bar.
He recounts a glamorous deal involving a transatlantic flight by Concorde to negotiate a contract in Manhattan: “Gordon was a very talented man.”
‘Red of tooth and claw’
Paul’s postgraduate experience at the London School of Economics (LSE) also had a major influence on him, not only as an academic experience, but also as a seedbed for future connections.
He chose LSE over offers from Oxbridge because he wanted a change from the ‘quadrangle-type’ university.
“The reality is that capitalism, ‘red of tooth and claw’, is not a safe way to run a society. It needs to have an overlay of protection for the public good. I don’t think that the market, as a mechanism that regulates behaviour, is as effective as it is sometimes held up to be.”
Paul predicts a “vast explosion” in regulation.
“There are always going to be oscillations in this. You go from public money being squandered, through bad decision-making, or corruption, and therefore, you need procurement rules. Then the procurement rules are so dense that they are holding things back, so they need to be adjusted. It’s a pendulum.”
As chair of the Business Law Committee when the Companies Act 2014 was commenced, Paul put together a large programme of rolling information: talks, CPD courses, and resource materials, such as draft articles of constitution.
“We gave our colleagues the tools – lawyers want precedents! That I certainly really enjoyed. That was a wonderful committee – it was really my ‘tribe’, on which I served for almost 20 years.
“After that, I was asked to chair the Legal Services Regulation Task Force. The big challenge was adjusting to the new costs regimes and rules. We had a great team and put together a set of precedents.
“Then I became chair of the Finance Committee, which is less direct, but more enabling, in that resources are directed where needed and husbanded properly.”
Doing it ‘Harvard style’
Keane’s current role is as chair of the Blackhall Place Property Steering Committee. The Council member is excited about the Law Society’s vision for the expanded legal-education campus at Blackhall Place.
He speaks of a ‘Harvard-style’ lecture theatre, as well as additional tutorial rooms and a mock courtroom, in the Benburb Street adjacent plot, now due for redevelopment.
“We need that, because solicitors need to be top-class in their training – they’ve got to be, so they can meet the challenges,” he says. “We must be providing the best to our students so that they can be the best solicitors.
“The site won’t be something we will develop all in one go, I suspect. There will be generations of solicitors and lawyers benefitting, though, and it’ll be a great resource.”
Keane hopes that the Law Society will always be the destination of choice for solicitor training. As such, it must have top-class facilities, in step with changing educational methods.
Plotting a course
Part of his role involves representing the Law Society and the International Bar Association in researching the latest developments in AI and its impact on the legal industry.
When reflecting on the technological changes over his career trajectory, from Dictaphone to AI, he notes that his favourite gadget remains his fountain pen – a gift from a grateful client!
The real risk to lawyers from AI is other professionals who can use it effectively, he points out. There will always be a need for lawyers who can think and have empathy, he says.
“You are dealing with humans in their decision-making, in their grief, and in their greed –and it’s about plotting a way through that. I want to see that colleagues get the education and be equipped to deal with current and future challenges,” he says.
Higher order
What he loves most about the law is its ability to help a client who arrives in his office confused, anxious or lacking direction.
“You can get through the chaff. And once you identify the real issues, the solutions then become apparent. Frequently, as lawyers, we have the responsibility of translating what our clients are saying to us, because people have anxieties, enmities, grievances, desires that they articulate in a particular fashion, but these may merely be an indication or a symptom of something else.
“When clients say to me, ‘this is a matter of principle’, I say to them, is that ‘principle’ or ‘principal’? I generally take a positive view of people, I think most people are reasonably well-disposed. And if you can demonstrate to them that the solution is in their interest, as much as anybody else’s, then they go for it.”
Paul relates how he saved a client from the loss of his business. Having closely read the company’s constitutional articles, Paul realised that procedural requirements had been short-circuited during the ousting.
“There is a role for medium-sized firms like ours to protect indigenous Irish business, to be alert to vindicate those rights – to protect people. Business law can also be a vindication of the small guy,” he says.
Mary Hallissey is a journalist at the Law Society Gazette.