Practising in Liverpool, Schuster was not noted as a particularly successful barrister, and he joined Her Majesty's Civil Service in 1899 as secretary to the Chief Commissioner of the Local Government Act Commission.

Schuster served in this position for 29 years under ten different Lord Chancellors, and with the contacts obtained thanks to his long tenure and his work outside the Office he became "one of the most influential Permanent Secretaries of the 20th century".

Despite being officially retired he continued to work in government circles, such as with the Allied Commission for Austria and by using his seat in the House of Lords as a way to directly criticise legislation.

[11] He matriculated at New College, Oxford in 1888 and graduated with second-class honours in history in 1892; again he was not noted as a particularly outstanding student, which was attributed to the time he spent enjoying himself rather than studying.

[14] With his love of the English language and the knowledge that he was "good with paper" Schuster decided to join Civil Service, with the intention of becoming a Permanent Secretary.

[15] His first post was as secretary to the Chief Commissioner of the Local Government Act Commission, which produced a report leading to the creation of the London County Council.

[16] In February 1912 he gave up his position as Chief Registrar to become Secretary (and then legal adviser) to the English Insurance Commission, with the newspapers of the time reporting that he had had "three promotions in two months", a consequence of his high standing with Morant.

[28] Luckily the job of the Lord Chancellor during the last two years of World War I was limited to maintaining the system rather than instituting any changes, and his tenure was uneventful.

[37] When Birkenhead became Lord Chancellor in 1919 he inherited the problem of English property law, and immediately instructed Schuster to prepare the department for forcing a bill through Parliament on the matter.

[38] After intense negotiation Schuster and the Law Society representative agreed that a "period of probation" lasting three years would be included in the bill, which Charles Brickdale the Chief Registrar of HM Land Registry considered "a very good bargain".

[43] Although the Supreme Court was resistant the committee did succeed in making some changes, such as introducing mandatory retirement ages for masters and clerks; they were unable, however, to end the patronage.

[46] The Conservative government under Stanley Baldwin soon ran into trouble due to his desire to introduce protectionist tariffs to protect British jobs.

[47] Baldwin called an early general election in December 1923 to serve as a referendum on the subject, and although the Conservatives remained the largest party they did not have enough Members of Parliament to claim a parliamentary majority.

[51] Haldane was ill, however, and the Labour government lasted only ten months thanks to the publishing of the Zinoviev Letter, and no large-scale reforms such as the creation of a Ministry of Justice were ever pushed through.

[54] The expansion of the Lord Chancellor's Office he had overseen also gave him greater opportunities to delegate to his subordinates, allowing him more time to spend on committees and inquiries directly influencing the way the government worked.

[54] As a reward for his continued service with the Lord Chancellor's Office he was made a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath in the 1927 New Year Honours.

[58] For a short period in August 1928 he acted as Prime Minister (Baldwin was on holiday in Aix-en-Provence) with Schuster as his chief adviser, but he rarely went to 10 Downing Street and nothing eventful happened during his time in charge.

[61] As Permanent Secretary Schuster was tasked with ensuring that the courts ran correctly, and although the Judges were independent they were paid by the Lord Chancellor's Office.

[62] Although a Select Committee in 1878 had recommended that County Court Judges be paid £2,000 a year this increase had still failed to appear due to the economic hardships caused by the First World War.

[62] The Prime Minister and Sankey met to write a letter to the judges demanding that they give in; as soon as Schuster heard about this he rushed to Whitehall to "stop the madness".

[69] In it he criticised the officials of the Lord Chancellor's Department[70] (which to listeners clearly meant Schuster specifically) and insinuated that the bill was part of a conspiracy to move power from the judiciary to the politicians (and thus the civil service) and create a Ministry of Justice.

[69][70] The speech provoked uproar in the house; a public quarrel between senior judges and civil servants had not happened in centuries, especially in such a traditionally calm and collected place.

[72][73] He went on to praise Schuster as "the author and instigator of many great reforms", and along with a similar speech by Lord Sankey and an amendment to the offending bill this helped appease Hewart.

[74] Fisher was horrified at how outdated the laws were, and with the permission of the Cabinet organised a War Legislation Committee under Schuster to draft a new code of defence regulations.

[75] Norman Brook, later head of the Civil Service, served as secretary, and the committee was described as "a model piece of organisation" thanks to the work of Schuster as chairman.

[81] Putting the country on a war footing would impact on the ability of people to fulfil their civil obligations if, for example, they were conscripted, and Schuster was made chairman of a Cabinet subcommittee "to consider the problems arising from the inability of persons, owing to war conditions, to fulfil their contractual and other obligations, and in particular to consider the complaints already made to MPs and government departments".

[90] He served as Treasurer of the Inner Temple in 1947, and in 1948 and 1949 took his seat in the House of Lords to voice his opinions on legislation, something he had previously been unable to do publicly due to Civil Service neutrality.

[92] He gave the Romanes Lecture in 1949 on the subject of "Mountaineering" and continued to play an active part in public life, helping reconstruct the Inner Temple after it was bombed in the Second World War.

[9] Schuster met William Walter Merry when he was Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford and the two became friends due to their shared love of mountaineering.

[94][95] Christopher also attended Winchester College and was killed in 1918 on the Western Front,[12] and Elizabeth later married Theodore Turner, a King's Counsel, before dying in 1983.