The head of rradar’s Scottish operation discusses his career, his firm’s proactive approach to legal risk management, and the ways working for a business that believes “prevention is better than cure” differs from life at a traditional law firm.

Alastair Gray leads the Scottish operation of rradar, the legal enterprise founded by the former DLA Piper partner Gary Gallen in 2012 with an emphasis on using education to prevent businesses encountering legal problems.

The firm’s Glasgow office, which Gray joined as a Solicitor Advocate in 2019, was the firm’s second in the UK. It now has multiple offices UK-wide.

In 2021 Gray became joint location head for the firm’s Glasgow office and in 2022 was appointed both Legal Director and Head of Scotland.

Turning the law firm model on its head

Explaining the rradar business model, Gray tells The Brief, “We have taken the traditional law firm model and turned it on its head. The prevailing model for law has been demand-led – waiting for things to go wrong and responding to crises that clients find themselves in.

“Our founder, Gary, saw this time and again in his interactions with the clients he was defending, across many years practising in senior legal roles. He knew there had to be a better way of doing things that enabled the people who were running organisations to understand how they could operate a regulatory and legally sound operation, ultimately to avoid breaching those regulations and laws that typically result in significant disruption.

“So he launched rradar, with proactive legal, regulatory and – fundamentally – risk management at the heart of the model.”

Proactive risk management

The firm’s ethos, Gray continues, centres around engaging with clients in the day-to-day running of their businesses to help them manage legal risk across all of rradar’s specialist areas, which include: business crime and regulation; commercial disputes; corporate and commercial; cyber, data and information law; employment and HR; health and safety; insurance; intellectual property; and tax.

“The idea is that if they work proactively with us rather than waiting for a crisis then they are going to be running smarter, better businesses with reduced legal risks,” he explains.

An embedded legal services partner to the insurance market

Not only does rradar provide its services on a direct fee-paying basis to clients, the firm is also a recognised and longstanding partner to the insurance market – acting as an embedded services provider in commercial insurance products.

Under this model, an organisation with a particular insurance policy that includes embedded rradar services can access rradar’s legal and regulatory advisory services at no additional cost.

The services rradar offers support the policyholder to build resilience and proactively manage risk, for example through access to a legal advisory helpline, a range of digital services – including an extensive, legally verified online library of content – and an intelligent legal assistant for on-the-go legal and regulatory support.

Ultimately, our model is that prevention is better than cure – but with the full security that we can provide support at any stage

Gray says this also represents a new dynamic in the insurance market, providing a proactive approach to risk.

He says, “From an insurance perspective, traditionally an organisation would buy an insurance policy through a broker, put it away and hope they were never required to use it. In a claim situation, they may pay an excess and potentially face an impact on future premiums, but often few lessons were being learned as a result.

“When rradar is embedded in an insurance policy, there is a range of comprehensive support that can enable the organisation to take proactive steps that could minimise the likelihood of a legal and/or regulatory issue affecting their operations that results in a claim. However, when an incident does occur, rradar's specialist litigation teams can step in to properly manage and fix the situation.

“Ultimately, our model is that prevention is better than cure – but with the full security that we can provide support at any stage in what we call the ‘prevent, manage, fix’ cycle.”

Multidisciplinary team

rradar currently employs a multi-disciplinary team of about 270 people UK-wide, around half of whom are lawyers, with the remainder made up of support functions including finance, marketing and a large in-house IT development department.

The firm was built from the outset as a multidisciplinary team, providing clients with access to everything they need from a proactive risk management point of view all in one place.

“That’s quite a unique thing for a law firm to have,” Gray says. “We have a team that deals with our internal IT infrastructure, but we also have IT development teams who work hand-in-hand with our lawyers to create the digital services and technologies that we make available to clients to help them manage legal and regulatory risk.

“The firm was built from the outset as a multidisciplinary team, providing clients with access to everything they need from a proactive risk management point of view all in one place.

“In an ideal world this helps them avoid having to defend any sort of litigated claim. But, of course, if it does happen then we have very strong litigation teams in all of our key disciplines.”

Fresh, different and exciting

Gray says he “fell into” law because at high school he was good at subjects like English and Modern Studies, and “a Law degree seemed like a good one to get.” After studying at Aberdeen’s “fantastic” law school he spent a year snowboarding and working in a record store in Canada before securing a traineeship at the Paisley office of McCusker McElroy & Gallanagh, one of Scotland’s biggest high street criminal legal aid practices, in 2010.

He remained with the firm post-qualification and, in 2018, gained extended rights of audience as a Solicitor Advocate.

The cases I work on now tend to be real crisis scenarios that require a lot of support and direction.

He says, “It was a very good place to cut your teeth as a lawyer and, as a Solicitor Advocate, I was defending cases in the High Court. However, this brought me to a crossroads in my career, and I was considering going to the Bar.

“But then I saw an advert for a job as a business crime and regulatory solicitor at rradar, and I was really intrigued by the model, which seemed very fresh, different and exciting.”

He applied successfully and, having risen through the firm, he now manages its entire Scotland operation and sits on rradar’s overall legal management board.

In tandem with his management role, Gray still practices, although now he focuses on more serious matters, such as prosecutions following workplace fatalities.

“The cases I work on now tend to be real crisis scenarios that require a lot of support and direction, and often not just the defence of a case but also advice around communication and stakeholder management,” he says.

Disruptive by design

The firm is continuing to pursue a high-growth strategy and, Gray says, although rradar’s business model does not require “an office in every single regional centre”, the firm maintains a strong appetite for market scanning to identify its next opportunities.

“Given the size of the UK market, and our vast and growing client base of over 147,000, there is potential for claims and litigated scenarios to arise in any area of Scotland or England,” he explains.

Gray says working for the firm differs from life at a traditional law firm because, “It’s a disruptive business and has always set out to style itself as such, so it feels very different.

“The culture is very different; it’s a very forward-thinking, tech-enabled business and over the years we have managed to recruit like-minded individuals who are interested in working for an ABS law firm that is growth-minded and gives our people the opportunity to do a lot of things beyond their day jobs.”

It’s a very forward-thinking, tech-enabled business and over the years we have managed to recruit like-minded individuals.

By way of example he says members of the litigation team would not only work on their caseloads but could also be involved in producing content to be shared with clients, including writing blogs or hosting webinars, and internal project work on development of systems as well as client-facing digital services.

“You are also likely to be out managing stakeholder relationships, potentially with broker partners and insurance policyholders, perhaps presenting to them, and a host of other things that I don’t believe many lawyers in more traditional practices get to do,” he continues.

“It was apparent to me when I first read about rradar that it offered a way to work for a commercial firm that I could directly drive forward and build to its infinite potential. There’s a real culture of collaboration here – we all enjoy working together to push the business forward year-on-year.

“In Scotland, we have been recognised repeatedly at the major legal awards events – including the Herald Law Awards, and Scottish Legal Awards – for our innovative model and high-performing teams. Nationally, we were ranked as a Times Best Law Firm for 2025 and 2026, and we are also listed in The Lawyer’s UK200. We are proud to see our name in such prestigious forums.[JL1] [AG2] 

“People work here because the business model and the style of the firm appeals to them, and that means we enable them to do more and achieve their full potential, because everybody is aligned and working toward common goals.”

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