Len G. Murray

The option of solicitor advocacy came on the scene a bit too late for me.

One cannot imagine Scots music and song without the contribution of Burns.

If I was starting off now, I would probably have taken one or two different turnings along the way.

If anyone ever asked me what I had to complain about it would not have taken long to tell them. Maybe I was just easily pleased.

I think that practising the law, particularly litigation, and particularly in Glasgow, has always been difficult enough without adding to it by having problems with professional colleagues or former colleagues.

Having said that, I enjoyed every minute of my time and I got a degree of job satisfaction which I am sure was far greater than the majority of my colleagues.

For in the works of Robert Burns we see the whole cosmos of man's experience and emotion, from zenith to nadir, from birth until death.

Besides, I always thought that one of the great attractions of practising law was what I like to call the collegiality of the profession and I think that duty of collegiality applies even when we are retired.

And thus it was that I started to wonder why Robert Burns is so important to us. We have other poets, and other writers, and other heroes, yet we do not afford them the veneration that we afford to Robert Burns.

And on 25 January of each year and for many days before it and after it there is not an hour in the day or night when a Burns Supper is not taking place somewhere on this earth.

There are even more statues of Robert Burns than of any other figure in world literature. Indeed if we discount figures of religion, then only Christopher Columbus has more statues than he worldwide.

There does not seem to be that collegiality I referred to, there seems to be much more of a them versus us attitude, rather than we all have a role to play in this process so let's get on with it.