Margaret Taylor

After she left her role at Burness Paull to join London media practice Simkins, Fiona McAllister – now a lawyer at Channel 4 – began looking for an extra-curricular activity that would allow her to contribute to society while at the same time not being too closely related to her day job.

Balfour & Manson partner Robert Holland is convinced that employment is the best practice area for a lawyer to work in because it offers what he describes as the “best combination of black-letter law with a human-interest angle”. As head of his firm’s employment practice he wou

When Amanda Millar put herself forward to become president of the Law Society of Scotland she wanted to make a difference to her profession during a time of considerable challenges. What she did not know back in the relative calm of 2018 was that by the time she took over from John Mulholland in Jun

If there is one thing the Scotch whisky industry could have done without this year it is a global pandemic. The sector, which employs 11,000 people and contributes billions of pounds to the UK economy each year, was still reeling from the impact of tariffs introduced by US President Donald Trump las

When disputes specialist Rachael Bicknell flew out to New Zealand at the beginning of this year the plan was to enjoy a break with her in-laws in a coastal paradise on New Zealand’s North Island. Then the coronavirus pandemic hit, and a trip that was supposed to last just a few weeks began str

In ordinary times, MBM Commercial would celebrate its August birthday alongside clients, sipping drinks and watching festival fireworks from an Edinburgh HQ that has a ringside view over the capital’s historic castle. These are not ordinary times, though, and while the firm, which was spun out

As a sports-mad youngster with an obsession for TV show Ally McBeal, Jodi Gordon’s main ambition when she was growing up was to find a job that would allow her to combine her love for both. After studying at the Universities of Aberdeen and Edinburgh and beginning her career at personal injury

When the Supreme Court gave its decision in long-running matrimonial dispute Villiers v Villiers this month it handed a significant victory to Edinburgh law firm SKO Family Law. Led by partner Rachael Kelsey – the K in SKO – the firm represented Mrs Villiers in a matter that had sought t

When news broke in June that a Sudanese asylum seeker had been shot dead after stabbing six people in a Glasgow hotel there was an immediate public outcry. How, people wanted to know, could a system that is supposed to protect the vulnerable have allowed a man with obvious mental health difficulties

In many ways Usman Tariq’s family history reads like a classic immigrant narrative. His grandfather came from Pakistan to Scotland in search of a better life; his father left school early to enter the world of work; Mr Tariq and his two sisters were enabled and encouraged to grab every educati

As someone who was inspired to become a lawyer after watching Granada TV show Crown Court, Claire Mitchell QC has always loved the drama of advocacy. “Crown Court was my first experience of the legal process and of true crime – I know it wasn’t true, but I was watching it as if it

Though he studied law at university, Patrick McGuire never really wanted to be a lawyer. Politics was his first love and, while he had enjoyed the intellectual rigour of his studies, he had imagined himself entering the political rather than the legal sphere. Joining personal injury specialist Thomp

If anything positive can be taken from the coronavirus pandemic it is that, almost overnight, accommodation was found for large numbers of Scotland’s street-homeless population. As soon as the lockdown was announced charities and local authorities mobilised, hotel rooms were acquired and rough

Human rights lawyer John Scott QC was an obvious choice when Police Scotland Chief Constable Iain Livingstone was looking for someone to scrutinise the force’s use of emergency coronavirus powers. Having already reviewed how Scottish police dealt with the miners’ strike as well as how th

A couple of months ago, the biggest issues William Grant and Sons general counsel Greg Bargeton had to deal with were enforcing the company’s intellectual property rights and coming up with ways to prepare the business for whatever Brexit might throw at it. Then the coronavirus pandemic hit an