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Government proposals for extensive new levels of direct government control and involvement in how Scottish solicitors work are to be removed from the Legal Services Regulation Bill, preserving supremacy of the rule of law, the Law Society of Scotland has said. The Regulation of Legal Services (Scotl
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Wright, Johnston & Mackenzie LLP (WJM) has recently welcomed two new hires at its Glasgow base in St Vincent Plaza. Michelle Young has joined its private client team in the role of senior solicitor, while solicitor Ellidh Clark has joined the renewables team.
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Thorntons has appointed two new partners, one an internal promotion and the other a lateral hire. Rachel Anderson, based in St Andrews, is promoted to private client partner and Jennifer Gallagher joins the firm’s Dundee team as a family law partner.
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Lindsays has appointed Michael Kitson as a director in its commercial property team in Edinburgh. With 14 years of experience, most recently with BTO, Mr Kitson has considerable experience in advising a range of clients across the private and public sectors, supporting developers, contractors,
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Lord Ericht and Lady Carmichael have been appointed to the First Division and Second Division of the Court of Session respectively, effective from 3 February 2025. The Lord President, Lord Carloway, and the Lord Justice Clerk, Lady Dorrian, recommended the appointments to allow court business to con
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Weightmans has made a raft of hires following a period of record growth, including one in Scotland. Mark Hastings joins the firm from BTO Solicitors LLP. He is a tutor at University of Glasgow and also acts for the UK government as a standing junior counsel to the Office of the Advocate General in S
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BTO has welcomed John Dunlop as a new partner in the firm’s real estate team, based in its Edinburgh office. This appointment follows last month’s announcement of Paul Greenhill’s promotion to partner in Glasgow, as well as the recent recruitment of three new real estate solicitors
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Scotland's legal aid crisis looks like it could be "unsolvable" as more than a third of legal aid lawyers are set to retire in the next decade. There are currently 911 solicitors registered for legal aid – down from 1,084 in 2020, a drop of 16 per cent.
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Tony Lenehan KC remains the top earner of legal aid fees, new figures from the Scottish Legal Aid Board show. In 2023-24, Mr Lenehan's fees were £450,000, an increase of £50,000 on the previous year.
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Criminal lawyers south of the border are to withdraw from legal aid work over a pay dispute with ministers. The Law Society is to advise its members to consider withdrawing from legal aid work or scaling it back until the UK government provides a "meaningful response" to lawyers' demands.
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Lord Chancellor Alex Chalk is being taken to the High Court by lawyers who say legal aid fees are so low they cannot provide representation to thousands of people. The case revolves around access to legal aid for immigration and asylum lawyers and is being brought by Duncan Lewis solicitors.
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The Law Society of Scotland is to withdraw from discussions on the creation of a review mechanism for legal aid fees, stating it had "lost confidence" in the Scottish government project following a lack of progress in two years. The Legal Aid Remuneration Project and Research Analysis Group were set
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Dr Rozemarijn Roland Holst has been awarded over £128,000 by the Leverhulme Trust for a three-year project entitled ‘The Making and Unmaking of Global Commons by International Organisations’. Global commons, areas outside national jurisdiction of states such as the high seas, Antar
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Edinburgh Law School's Professor James Harrison is to deliver his inaugural lecture on a fundamental question of environmental legal scholarship: how much environmental protection can we expect environmental law to deliver? Whilst protection of the environment is undoubtedly the underlying obj
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A University of Dundee study will give volunteer jurors from across Scotland the opportunity to deliver their verdict on the future of digital crime fighting. The university’s Leverhulme Research Centre for Forensic Science (LRCFS) is recruiting members of the public as part of research focusi
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Dundee Law School has become the first in Scotland to establish a module in trauma-informed practice as part of its diploma course. The module will prepare students to support clients seeking legal advice while they are affected by traumatic life events.
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A new booklet celebrates the women of Strathclyde Law School as it celebrates its diamond jubilee this year. It states: "The idea for the booklet dates to 2022 when Claire McDiarmid and Rebecca Zahn decided to embark on a project to collate the memories that women academics have of their time in the
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A police officer has admitted he crashed into another motorist because he was watching porn on his phone. Tristan Macomber, an officer in Lake County, Florida, initially lied about what he was doing when he rear-ended another vehicle while on duty in early November 2024, local TV channel WESH r
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A judge has annulled a marriage where the bride was tricked into going along with what she believed was a fake wedding organised as a social media prank. The woman said she was invited to what she was told was a "white party" – where everyone is expected to wear white – by a man she had
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Two lynx illegally released into the Scottish Highlands in an apparent bid to reintroduce the big cats to the region, hundreds of years after they were driven to extinction, have been captured.
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Nearly 100 brand-new games consoles have been handed to gun owners in exchange for their weapons as part of a US public safety initiative. Charity NOLA GROWN, working in partnership with New Orleans City Council, offered free PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles in exchange for handguns and othe
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A monkey in a pink tutu has been apprehended by police in the US. The fashionable spider monkey was staying at a home in Jefferson County, Missouri when it "managed to open a door and get outside", police said.
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