Hello. I am Judith-Anne MacKenzie.

I studied law at King's College London from 1972 until 1976, first for my LLB and then for my LLM. At the same time I took a course in theology, which allowed me to become an Associate of King's College (AKC).

In 1987 I qualified as a barrister and was called to the Bar by Lincoln's Inn. My choice of Inn was easy because Lincoln's Inn has always been the home of Chancery barristers.  I am pleased to be able to say that I took my Bar Final examinations in the same room that Thomas Moore had used as a court room (Old Hall, Lincoln's Inn).

(Photo © Judith-Anne MacKenzie)

Articles of clerkship

When I left King's, I first took articles (now a training contract) with a large firm of solicitors in West Surrey. I had a wide range of work, including a great deal of domestic and commercial conveyancing. It was the middle of a property boom and conveyancing work made a great deal of money for the firm. At one point I realised that I had earned the firm my salary, my secretary's salary, and our share of the office overheads, in the first 6 weeks of the year! I found the rules of land law became much easier to understand when they were applied in practice and this later helped form my view that the teaching of land law would benefit from being related to practical examples.

Teaching

After my articles, I returned to the academic world and became a lecturer at the Polytechnic of Central London, teaching land law and company law. I taught law undergraduates and non-law postgraduates who were taking the one year conversion course for the Bar.  I found it worrying that the latter group of students, who were older and experienced students, and who all had very good degrees from excellent universities, still found studying land law difficult.  I was teaching these students with Mary Phillips (who was Dean of the PCL Law School and later became Dean of the Inns of Court School of Law) and together we decided that a large obstacle was the traditional method of teaching the subject, which spent a great deal of time teaching the complex history of land law and then told the students that most of this had been abolished by the 'new' legislation in 1925. This was the teaching method used in all law schools at the time and by all the available textbooks. Mary and I decided to change the way we taught and to adopt an approach that started with someone wanting to buy a house and worrying about what was involved.  At first we had to give our students a reading list that jumped from text to text.  This was a nuisance for the students and put a lot of pressure on library resources.  Therefore, we decide to publish our own textbook. It was published in 1986 and was then called A Practical Approach to Land Law. Over the years, and through succeeding editions, that book has developed into the current text: Textbook on Land Law. Mary Phillips has now retired from all her legal work and thus I produced the 16th Edition alone and for this 17th Edition have had trhe benefit of the assistance of Dr Aruna Nair, who is a lecturer in law at King’s College London.

Barrister

1986-1987 was an important year for me because, as well as publishing this book, I took a sabbatical from teaching and did the course for the Bar Finals (as they were called then). I was called to the Bar in July 1987. I then undertook pupillage, while still teaching, and continued at the self-employed Bar until 1989. I largely specialised in Company and Insolvency law.

In 1989, I joined the Civil Service as Assistant Parliamentary Counsel and for three years worked on the drafting of Parliamentary Bills and advice on the passage of Bills through Parliament and parliamentary procedure.

In 1992, I moved to the Government Legal Service, to a post in the Department for Energy. Thereafter, I worked in a range of government departments, including the Department for Trade and Industry, the Department for Environment, Transport and the Regions, and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. My final post was as a Divisional Manager at the Department for Transport.  Over the years, I worked on a very varied range of topics, for example: coal privatisation; power stations and nuclear fuel; railways; local government; electoral reform; construction of road vehicles; carriage of dangerous goods by road and rail; and Crossrail.  The work was very interesting and involved giving legal advice to Secretaries of State (in writing and in meetings); advice and advocacy in international meetings (such as EU and Council of Europe negotiations); checking draft press releases and consultation papers for legal accuracy; preparing instructions for my old colleagues at the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel; instructing barristers in chambers in relation to judicial review and other matters; working on large commercial projects; and drafting secondary legislation (Statutory Instruments). In addition, I managed a large team of lawyers and was a pupil supervisor.

While working in this way as a practising employed barrister, I also became a member of the Bar Council and subsequently of Committees of the Bar Standards Board.

Retirement

Unfortunately, I have 8 chronic medical conditions and in 2009 became too unwell physically to continue to work, particularly under the pressures of my then post.  Accordingly, I took early retirement on medical grounds. In addition to authoring Textbook on Land Law I am a broderer at Southwark Cathedral and assist at Lincoln's Inn with a number of student issues and by chairing the Inn's annual training for pupil supervisors.

The future of land law

When I was an undergraduate, land law changed very slowly.  The main changes came from some very original decisions by Lord Denning MR! A great deal of conveyancing was still carried out under the unregistered land régime because land registration only applied to a portion of England and Wales. 

The main changes that I have seen over the years have been:

• the alteration of the rules concerning the creation of contracts in relation to land;
• the creation of the new trust of land and the abolition of the possibility of creating new strict settlements, which were largely being created by mistake under home-made wills and which could cause havoc for the beneficiaries under the trust; and
• the extension of land registration to the whole country and the extensive changes to the registered land system made in 2002;
• the complete revision of the rules on perpetuities and accumulations relating to land;
• detailed proposals for the reform of the complex and confusing rules relating to easements and restrictive covenants; and
• the invention of Commonhold.

For the future, I anticipate that there will be further changes to the land registration system, which is likely to become an increasingly on-line service. In time, it should be possible to registrations to be carried out on-line, thus reducing the time gap between creation of estates and interests and their protection on the register.  The Law Commission is also investigating why Commonhold has proved unpopular and a consultation is due to start in 2018 as to possible reforms of the Commonhold system, in order to make it more attractive to developers. 

An area of reform that would be very welcome, but which may not be given parliamentary time for the necessary legislation, is the reform of the law relating to easements and freehold covenants.  The Law Commission has done extensive work on these areas, which are covered in the book.  However, the legislation required is complex and is not a government priority.  Thus, unless this area of work is chosen as a relatively uncontroversial subject that can be fitted into the legislative programme, it may not be brought forward for some time.  This is very likely to be the case if, as anticipated, BREXIT measures occupy a lot of parliamentary time in the next few years.

The other area of legislative reform that may come up is any change to the UK position on human rights. The current government promised to bring forward a Bill to repeal the Human Rights Act and replace it with some type of 'UK human rights' legislation.  If this occurs, there may be some changes that affect land law.  However, you will see in the book that changes to land law due to the Human Rights Act have not been extensive (the main change has been abolition of the landlord's self-help remedy of distress) and any new legislation may, in practice, not change the situation at all in relation to land.

As far as judicial decisions are concerned, it is difficult to predict the future because everything turns on the cases that happen to be brought to court.  Changes to the Legal Aid system make litigation less likely now than was once the case.  However, one can guess that disputes in the areas of estoppel, constructive trusts and undue influence will continue to arise and may lead to further refinement of the current law.

Some questions asked over the years

Over the years, a number of questions have been asked about the book and about land law.  Below are the answers to a number of these questions. 

If you would also like to ask a question, please feel free to do so. Please email your question to: orc.help@oup.com, and we will post the response on this website and include it on this page in future editions.

Question:

Practising property law at a high street firm and a City firm are obviously very different – how would you recommend I go about getting exposure to both before I have to decide which direction my LPC should take?

Answer:

Many firms will allow you to do a short time with them during your degree course, so that you can find out what the work is like. Contact the HR departments of firms you are interested or the partner who deals with training contracts in order to see the difference. Bear in mind, however, that the differences are not likely to be as great as you may imagine, save that small, local firms are more likely to have a "social housing" practice. Also, do not forget that a number of barristers specialise in property work. Many chambers offer mini-pupillages (which usually last for one or two weeks). The best way to check for these is to look at chambers' websites to see what their areas of specialism are and whether they offer mini-pupillages.

Question:

What do you consider to have been the biggest change to land law since you studied it? And do you think it has been a change for the better?

Answer:

The expansion and reform of the system of land registration has undoubtedly been the biggest change. However, the reform of the law of trusts relating to land runs it a close second. Taken together, these changes are welcome because they have simplified the law and made it easier to establish title to land.

Question:

I love watching property programmes such as Grand Designs and Location, Location, Location but struggle to remain engaged with my land law course – why in this area of law is the theory baffling but the practical application so much more appealing?

Answer:

Land law is a subject that is technical in nature because of the value of the property being dealt with and its unique character (no two properties are the same). As people over the ages have been very concerned about protecting their rights in relation to land, it is hardly surprising that the law is not as simple as it would be were you just buying something like a table or chairs. However, land law becomes easier to understand the more of it you know. Therefore persist in your studies and try to help your own learning by imagining yourself applying the technical rules to the practical issues you come across in daily life. You may also find that it is helpful to read the main pieces of legislation from start to finish, rather than just looking up individual sections or sub-sections because this gives a better idea of the whole story. If you do this, do read an up-to-date amended form of the Act(s) in question and you may find it helpful to start by reading any interpretation provisions before you read the rest of the Act.  Don't try to memorise the whole Act but read it to understand how it is structured and what it does as a whole. 

Question:

Given all the recent news coverage is there likely to be a proposed eco-town neighbouring Trant Way in subsequent editions?

Answer:

The eco-town idea was raised in the past but has not really taken off. I will look at the issue again, should the idea be pursued in practice. I would have to see whether the property rules, as opposed to the local planning law and environmental law, are at all different from those described in the book.

Question:

Property law seems to be changing constantly – how can I keep abreast of the changes? And what cases should I read to show in my assessed work that I am up to date?

Answer:

Property law does now change more rapidly than used to be the case but still not as rapidly as some areas of law (for example, criminal law). Many legal journals provide a good idea of important recent cases: the New Law Journal, the Estates Gazette and The Conveyancer are particularly helpful in relation to land law.  In any event, I expect that your tutors should also be able to advise. We will normally add to this Online Resource Centre a note on anything that is new and very important.

Question:

How varied a career can you have if you’re interested in land law? Or is it just a matter of going into conveyancing?

Answer:

There are a lot of different aspects of law in which an interest in land law is helpful - I used to practice in company law and insolvency rather than land law (the link is charges and mortgages). At the Bar, almost any Chancery practice will involve some work that is land law based. You can also work in a large firm of solicitors on commercial transactions that have property aspects and, of course, my work in the Government Legal Service often involved aspects of land law. The last big property project I worked on was Crossrail, which involved a great deal of land acquisition, planning law and other property issues.

Question:

I'm dreading studying land law as I’ve seen friends in the year above really struggle, so I want to give myself the best chance of understanding it. What advice can you give me for getting up-to-speed before the course starts?

Answer:

Read our book (of course!). However, it is also useful to read some of the property statutes. Many students never think to read an Act of Parliament as a whole thing and that is really the only way to understand them properly. Why not get a good property law handbook with the legislation and just read it. You will probably find it helpful to read the first couple of chapters of my book before you start and see the comments above about reading statutes.

Question:

I struggled with land law until someone recommended I take a look at your book, and in particular how you base the examples in ‘real’ life using Trant Way. Everything became so much clearer – why don’t all land law lecturers take a contextual approach?

Answer:

I am sorry you had a tough time. It may help to know that I found land law quite tough when I first started studying it in the second year of my degree. I think it all became much clearer once I knew more and thus the relevance of some of the basics began to fall into place in my head. So a main part of the answer is to keep going and to try to understand why the rules are as they are or, in some cases, just to accept that they are strange and not always entirely logical.  Some people find making diagrams helps, which is why we provide quite a few of these in the book, others like to construct numbered lists of the rules in a systematic order.  Indeed, land law really can be quite fun, once you develop a methodical approach to the rules. It may also help to try to relate the rules to an actual example.  The traditional way of teaching land law was to teach all the history (starting in 1066) and then tell you it was all changed in 1925! That is what happened to me when I learned the subject and I must say that I have never found a practical use for some of that knowledge but some of it has proved helpful when dealing with some of the more arcane problems that can arise when practising law. I thought that the old teaching method was not appropriate on modern courses and noted that, save for Equity and Trusts, no other course was taught in the same way. I thus developed, with Mary Phillips, my original co-author, a new way of approaching the subject. Still, not everyone agrees with us. Please tell your lecturers that you found our approach helpful and then perhaps future students might find life easier.

Question:

What was the reason for writing a land law textbook in the first place? You are now on the 17th edition, what motivates you to keep writing?

Answer:

As I explain in the Preface to the book and above, I and Mary Phillips first developed a new teaching method and then realised that there was no suitable textbook for our modern approach. Therefore we wrote the book to go with our teaching practice. I keep up writing because I enjoy it and because students keep telling me that they find the book helpful and many lecturers choose it as a course text or as ancillary reading. Also, I do actually find the subject fascinating. I am always interested when some of my friends at the Bar run their current cases by me (suitably anonymised to protect client confidentiality) to see whether I agree with their approach or let me know about a case that may appear in the law reports.  We really do sit about in the Lincoln's Inn common room discussing land law issues over a cup of tea or a glass of wine.

Question:

Most textbooks seem to get longer and longer – with so much new property law to include how do you decide what to leave out?

Answer:

My aim is to cover anything that is essential knowledge and also to take account of the way that modern courses are structured. Some matters that I find interesting or important, but which are less important on degree and other courses, are now found on this Online Resource Centre. We took a decision some time ago not to cover "landlord and tenant" law (as opposed to the basic issues relating to the leasehold estate) because this is now really a separate subject in itself. If you feel that anything important to your studies of land law has been omitted, please let me know by emailing the address given above for questions.

Question:

I often find the legal terminology used in land law quite baffling. Why are such technical terms used in teaching instead of just saying things in clear English that everyone can understand?

Answer:

All law has technical terminology, not just land law. For example, the word 'tort' is not used by the general population but is frequently used by lawyers because it is shorthand for a concept that is long-winded to describe. One issue with land law is that there are lots of different types of rights in land, each with its own name. Some of the names seem odd because they are so old (profits à prendre, for example) and at one time all law in England was conducted in Norman French. Without the names, you would land up with a long descriptive phrase. However, I understand your point and, of course, the modern property statutes (for example, the Land Registration Act 2002) do try to use simpler language, where it is possible to do so without losing technical accuracy.

Question:

It is obviously important for a textbook to appeal to students and lecturers. Who do you prioritise when you’re writing – is this a book for students, or a book for lecturers?

Answer:

This book is for the reader - and the readers are mainly students. We are trying to offer practical help to those who want to learn the subject. However, I was pleased to be told by one of my friends, who has an extensive property practice at the Bar, that he uses my book a lot in chambers because it starts him off in the right direction, before he does more detailed research.  So I hope that you find the book helpful now and that you discover that it is a useful quick reference later on in your career.

Question:

Why is the chapter ‘What is land?’ at the end of the book and not at the beginning?

Answer:

As I say in the book, I think that the issue of what constitutes land is one of the most complex areas of the subject. I therefore consider you will only find it really understandable once you have a grasp of the subject. Hence I put it at the end. If you are concerned about terminology, trying to understand what an "incorporeal hereditament" is, before you know what an interest in land is could be a bit too much to take!  I do give a short summary at the start of the book, which is enough to get you through the text. 

Question:

Given that the housing market is changeable at present, is there really a future for anyone wanting to go into conveyancing?

Answer:

Property will always be bought and sold but whether there will be money for lawyers in the transactions is another matter. In essence, your guess is as good as anyone’s on this. However, land law is not just about conveyancing and there continues to be plenty of work in property law. Or you may wish to go into an area of work in which knowledge of land law is an essential extra, such as matrimonial law.  At the Bar, property work might involve something like advising on or drafting a complex trust or advising someone whether a mortgage is unenforceable against them due to undue influence.

Question:

I love Trant Way; it's such an original and engaging way to convey the various concepts in land law. How did you come up with the idea?

Answer:

I had used practical examples while lecturing and I wanted to have a series of practical examples in the book. I then decided that it was clearer and more fun to have a whole road, in which people acted as people usually do. That road would be in an ordinary town in an ordinary place in England and Wales. It had to be invented, so that we did not suggest that anyone in a real property was experiencing some of the issues described - hence Trant Way in Mousehole was created. Over the years, properties have been added and the characters owning or having interests in them have changed.  Most of the names in the book have some particular meaning to me but I am not going to disclose them, apart from to say that Trant Way was named after Phyllida Trant in Rumpole of the Bailey and that at one point you will find a document witnessed by a Miss Possum and I happen to have a possum on my coat of arms.

Question:

I have the option of studying a trusts module before one on land. Would an understanding of trusts law help me with land law, or is it the other way around?

Answer:

This is really difficult and the best thing is to ask your tutors for advice because the answer turns on what exactly is covered by each course (this can vary between different teaching establishments). On balance, however, it is probably usually best to study trusts first if you must choose.

Question:

While I enjoyed reading the scenarios set in Trant Way, I'm not sure that the full extent of complexities can be effectively illustrated this way. Do the scenarios give the full picture or do I need to do further study to fully understand all the implications of a given issue?

Answer:

The scenarios do not cover all the complexities. Instead they are there to help you think through the application of the basic principles. Once you have done this, you should be able to work through more complex cases on your own, using the skills you have developed.

Question:

I'm finding it difficult to make the link between the theory and reality of modern conveyancing practice. How is the law working to meet the demands of the modern owner-occupier situations?

Answer:

The reforms of the law relating to land registration were very much aimed at helping simplify property law arrangements. The many proposals for reform of the law produced by the Law Commission (for which see the book and their website) are also aimed at ensuring that the law matches modern life. However, land is a form of property that lasts for a very long time and any reform of the subject has to take into account the complex sets of rights and obligations that may have accumulated over time. Also, on the whole, property law reform does not come up in the manifestos of political parties and thus does not get a high priority when a government is elected.  Accordingly, law reform in this area tends to be very slow.