All the stars were aligned when Edinburgh law and French student Philip Fitzgerald decided to spend his Erasmus exchange year in Aix-en-Provence. A passionate rugby player, he joined the U23 junior league of the Rugby Club Toulonnais (RCT) before moving on to the Pro D2, the second tier of France’s rugby union club competition.
Twenty years later, the Stirling-born Scot may have taken off his boots professionally speaking, but his roots firmly remain in Toulon, where he is a happily married father of two. In his adopted town, he now defends the rights of others by following his other passion in life, the law.
I was doing a law and French degree at Edinburgh university, and I had to do the Erasmus year as part of my studies, otherwise, I couldn't have continued doing French. It was my third year and was a life changer for me and everyone else on my course.
Was it luck that took you to a rugby heartland, or did you play a part in the decision to go there specifically?
I knew people who had done an exchange the year before – one had been in Paris and the other was Aix-en-Provence, with which the University of Edinburgh set up an exchange. There were four of us altogether doing Erasmus, and two of us were rugby players, so we wrote to the club in Toulon.
Aix was the base for the university, and Toulon was where the rugby happened. The whole experience was a bit of a fairytale, because we were in the U23 side, they had just won the Frantz-Reichel championship (an U21 elite rugby competition), and a lot of those players were still in that age category. So, we fell in with them, and we won the title again within that year. Everything fell into place. I was very lucky.
Philip Fitzgerald played for Rugby Club ToulonnaisPhilip Fitzgerald
You have swapped professional rugby for the more intellectual pursuit of the law…
Yes, I’ve lived in Toulon for 27 years now, and I cover the whole of France as a lawyer. I obtained a Diplôme d’Etudes Supérieures Spécialisées: Droit immobilier et administration du patrimoine (Masters Degree in property law) at the Université du Sud Toulon-Var in 2001, and then completed a Diplôme d’Etudes Approfondies: Droit des contentieux public et privé (Research Masters Degree) in 2004.
Ad
I carried on with my legal training at the regional Bar school in Marseille where I obtained my certificate of aptitude for the Legal Profession (CAPA).
Philip Fitzgerald: 'Fighting the good fight'Philip Fitzgerald
What does your work involve now?
I took oath at the Appeal Court of Aix-en-Provence in 2014. I do a mixture of civil and criminal law, which includes family law, divorce, organising visiting rights, accidents, or criminal and civil aspects of an assault.
I represent either side depending on the situation.
I do sports law as well. For example, defending a client in front of a disciplinary hearing if something's happened on the rugby pitch. I've done that a number of times.
Apart from the sports-specific cases, has your former career helped you become a better lawyer?
Rugby is a good sport, and teaches you that you can't do anything on your own. Everyone relies on each other. There are a lot of positives to rugby in terms of team building and trying to reach goals together, and showing how teams work.
I loved playing rugby. I had a great time, playing from when I was eight until I was 33 years old, and I have a lot of great memories.
It was a big leap for me from playing professional rugby to doing anything else. It was a big change in my life. When you make any transition from lifestyle to work, there’s always a moment where you reflect on what you are doing and try to work out who you are as a person. It's not easy, but you can learn a lot from it and build on it as a human being.
Once I left the pitch. I realised I was the same person, and I’ve tried to bring as many of those good ingredients that hopefully I brought into rugby, to my clients, to do a good job and fight the good fight.
How did you cope with practising law in French? How long did it take for you to become fluent?
It did take time. The big step for me was coming to France for that Erasmus year. It’s quite difficult when you realise what you've learned in the classroom is not the same in reality. There's that saturation period at the start, which is a great experience, where you’re sitting at the table learning, or nothing's being absorbed, because you can't process the information.
And then, little by little, it’s like tuning into a radio station where it becomes clearer and you realise you’ve got a new mountain to climb after that. But it's all part of the process.
It sounds like you would do it all again if you could…
I'm probably very biased, but I’ve loved France from the start. I love the rugby in France, and so many other things over and above that.
There's so much to gain as a person by going to a different country and opening yourself up to another culture, another language, and learning how other human beings interact and express themselves.
What would you say to others contemplating such a life-changing move?
French is just a beautiful language and the country has a beautiful culture to discover, if you're willing to persist and get past the difficulty and frustration of not really being understood at the beginning. But, once you get beyond that, it's a real gift on so many levels and in terms of personal development. It’s an amazing life experience if you’re willing to engage in it.
