Majella Walsh

Those who know her professionally would not have been startled at the news. Noted by clients for her professionalism and personal approach, she has gained a positive reputation in her adopted city of Cork through her firm, Majella Walsh Solicitors.

Some awards within the legal profession gravitate towards high-profile areas such as corporate transactions, complex commercial litigation or medical negligence. Ms Walsh’s recognition, though, serves as a reminder that the foundations of the profession are also built upon trusted local solicitors who provide practical, expert advice across a broad spectrum of legal matters.

It also highlights the fact that the general practice firm has a vital role in understanding the communities it serves, building lasting relationships with clients and delivering accessible, high-quality legal services tailored to local needs.

She was, though, she says, delighted with the accolade. “I was very happy to accept it. In fact, I was slightly surprised I hadn’t put myself forward for anything like this before: I suppose I looked at the awards last year and at the very deserving candidates and asked myself: why can’t I do this too?

Ms Walsh, a native of Co Kilkenny, adds: “I applied for the sole practitioner category, explained my background and what my firm does, and the interaction and relationship we have with our clients. It’s very much self-assessment, I suppose at that stage, though a judging panel of peers ultimately makes the selection.

“As a sole practitioner, I’m everything to everybody. And while I do have three support staff, one of whom is my trainee solicitor, I need to know what’s going on regarding every aspect of the firm and I thought, no one else is  going to go out to promote me so let’s try it.”

While she doesn’t regard herself as personally ambitious, Ms Walsh concedes that she is quite driven when it comes to the law, a profession she didn’t enter by a totally conventional route. “I came to law late, and that perhaps made me push myself a little bit harder,” she says.

Working in a Waterford solicitor’s firm as a legal secretary, before moving to Cork where she studied Law at night, she says: “I was always trying to do more than what was expected of me and these were 14-hour days with school before work, school after work and then my holidays were taken to do exams.”

After taking a business and accounting degree in Waterford which included law as one of its components, and then completing the FE1 whilst holding down a full-time job, Ms Walsh qualified as a solicitor in 2008 and trained with a legal practice in Cork city before working with the Health and Safety Authority for eight years, an experience which still informs her approach.

“I work in pretty much the same legal areas same as my colleagues, such as conveyancing, litigation and probate, but having been with the Health and Safety Authority I would like to establish myself in that arena, and its one that I’m getting increasingly involved in,” she says.

“There are too many people still having very bad, catastrophic accidents at work. That kind of regulatory environment is very much proactive and ideally a corporate entity would talk to someone like me before something happens – because by the time an accident occurs at a company, a review of documentation and a review of their process or policies is too late. My focus has been trying to move to an agreed proactive rather than a reactive approach.”

As a sole practitioner, she has had the confidence to establish her firm on Cork’s South Mall, which has long been regarded as the city’s legal and financial district, with one of the highest concentrations of solicitors’ firms in Ireland outside Dublin and alongside firms such as RDJ, JW O’Donovan and PJ O’Driscoll. “I didn’t think of any other location except the South Mall to set up, and that’s because I wanted to be in the middle of everything,” she says.

Like many similar practices, conveyancing is important from a business point of view, having a different timeline to areas such as litigation, which can be a longer process and Majella Walsh Solicitors has also developed an expertise in export and immigration law.

This underlines the dramatic shift in the European landscape since EU legislation ceased to be applicable in the UK businesses and individuals have been faced with a review of contracts and terms that can help prevent sometimes costly delays to trade.

She describes herself as predominantly a private client solicitor. “I tend to help individuals more than big corporate entities, though I’m more than happy to talk to any large company and I have clients from all over the world.”

Ms Walsh is on the roll of the Law Society of England and Wales and is qualified to practice there. Immediately post-Brexit, the traffic was in the other direction: after the 2016 referendum, there was an unprecedented surge in solicitors from England and Wales seeking admission to the Irish roll of solicitors to preserve their access to practising rights within Europe under an EU professional title and while this has subsided, there is still interest among lawyers advising multinational companies operating across Europe.

“There’s a wide range of business here, including multinationals, medical device and pharma companies and Cork’s links to Europe are good with the Port of Cork not far away and we have an international airport (the second busiest in the Republic of Ireland after Dublin).

Ms Walsh is appreciative of the variety of her clients. “It’s a cosmopolitan mix and I’ve learned a lot from my clients about their different cultures and customs.”

Many of her clients, she says, tend to self-refer. “When you’re coming to a country and have no family there, you must build your own support network. I’ve been very lucky in that my clients come back to me for myriad things,” she says.

“You might, for example, initially help an individual with a very straightforward property transaction then they subsequently come back with a litigation or immigration issue – because if people are settling down in the country, they’ll have questions about citizenship for themselves, their partner or children. Their employer may have asked them to do that but they need help in going about it and that’s predominantly the kind of situation I deal with.”

As her workdays are highly structured, Ms Walsh ensures that the weekends are not. “Family life keeps me on my toes and I tend to take a more relaxed approach to the weekend,” she says.

Her main satisfaction in the office is being able to solve clients’ problems. “There’s no such thing as a stupid question and I enjoy explaining things to people. I’m a great one for practicalities and I just like to make a difference for people. It’s maybe as simple as getting somebody into a house as easily as possible or standing up and defending people in litigation. It’s about making a difference in people’s lives, even on a very basic level.