INTERVIEW:Moya Quinlan reckons that when she was a student, there were maybe 10 practising female solicitors in Ireland. Both the profession and Quinlan herself have come a long way since then, writes FIONA GARTLAND
LAW WAS NEVER just a career choice for veteran solicitor Moya Quinlan; it was and is a way of life.
Still advising at her practice on Parnell Square, Dublin, the 92-year-old has the legal profession in her blood.
Sitting in the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin, where she was presented with the inaugural Irish Law Awards Lifetime Achievement Award earlier this month, Quinlan says her grandfather and father were solicitors before her. After leaving Sion Hill College in Blackrock, she naturally began studying law with the Incorporated Law Society.
“There were 50 in my class of which there were four girls; maybe 10 women were practicing solicitors at the time,” she says.
After qualifying in 1946, she joined her father at his practice, then called Joseph H Dixon, now Dixon Quinlan Solicitors. When he died some eight years later, she decided to continue the practice alone. She focused on private clients, carrying on the tradition of the family solicitor.
“There is a very strong human element; people come to talk to you and they don’t come in to talk about the weather. They have a problem and they expect you to help them to solve it,” she says.
Family law was new at the time and very demanding.
“There is also an emotional element attached to it, in that it’s a personal thing. People are really going through a bad time; it doesn’t matter which side you’re on,” she says.
The practice flourished, and in 1969, Quinlan was elected the first Lady Council member of the Law Society. She has been re-elected every year since then. Along with others, she was responsible for the purchase of what is now the Law Society headquarters in Blackhall Place, opened in 1978. The listed building was formerly the Kings Hospital School.
As we talk, people approach her and she leans forward on her walking stick to shake their hands, brushing off their congratulations. She admits she is touched by the award, but modest about why she is receiving it.
In 1980, Quinlan was appointed first Lady President of the Law Society. It was a wonderful time for her, she says.
“It was absolutely unbelievable. We are not the most popular profession in the world; it was heart-warming the way people reacted to you. I used to say to my colleagues, I never realised how highly people think of lawyers even though they are criticised so badly.”
She has served on many boards and committees, including the Legal Aid Board and the Primary Schools Curriculum Development Programme. She still attends Law Society council meetings and is still on the Employment Appeals Tribunal.
Although a woman of firsts, Quinlan has never seen herself as a pioneer in the profession.
“In all my years of practice, I have never felt that I was either special or that I was in any way unique; I was just a solicitor who happened to be a woman, that’s basically it.”
The profession, she believes,is blind to gender. She acknowledges, though, that it has changed since she started out and she worries a little.
“When I qualified, the family solicitor was the advisor and it was really very much part of the living and doing of various families; that is to an extent dying out because you have bigger firms, and the growth in commercial practice has been astronomical,” she says.
“I think perhaps it’s got so big now that there is a different ethos around; maybe people are missing out a bit. I think there is a greater anxiety for people to make money now . . . in some of the offices, there are 76 partners, so the running of the office has to change; you have to run it like a business – it’s just a different era.”
But despite the changes, she would still recommend the law to young people today, including her grandson Michael, who has joined the practice, as his father did before him.
“I’ve been very fortunate. I’ve had a very wonderful career and had the opportunity to do things that I would never have had otherwise,” she says.
“I would recommend it to anybody; of course, the profession will say ‘easily knowing she’s at the end of the road’.”
She sits back in her seat and laughs a little, not at all like a woman at the end of the road.