‘When poor people can’t afford to pay for a proper, quality defence they suffer miscarriages of justice’
On graduating, he eschewed the more lucrative fields of conveyancing or corporate law for the gritty life of a criminal defence lawyer because he thought it would be more interesting and fulfilling. Now a solicitor advocate, he spends most of his days in the country’s courts and prisons, dealing with clients charged with anything from breach of the peace to murder.
Although Houston spurns the image of himself as a social crusader, it is fair to say he was attracted to the prospect of representing those at the margins of society; the poor, the addicted or the mentally ill, who might otherwise be deprived of a voice. Yet today he is preparing to join his fellow defence solicitors in unprecedented national industrial action which could bring the courts grinding to a halt. It is a move he says he very much regrets, a last resort in an attempt to force the Scottish Government to listen to lawyers’ concerns about what they see as an assault on the criminal justice system.