Margaret Taylor

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

When Dundee United Football Club were named winners of the SPFL Championship last week it should have been cause for serious celebration. It is not every day, after all, that a club gets to claim promotion to the Premiership. Yet as Laura McCallum, head of football administration and legal affairs a

Moir and Sweeney Litigation partner Ian Moir is well known as a vociferous defender of legal aid, with his role as co-convenor of the Law Society of Scotland’s legal aid committee seeing him lobby hard on behalf of colleagues who make a living doing publicly funded work. As part of that he hel

It all could have been so different for MML Legal partner Ryan Russell, an employment specialist who has won countless high-profile cases on behalf of wronged employees.  During his studies at Dundee University, Mr Russell formed a band that enjoyed some early success, leading the budding lawye

When Pinsent Masons was last night crowned Stonewall Scotland’s Workplace Diversity Champion for the second year running, it was in no small part down to the work done by senior associate Craig Macphee. Indeed, with the construction sector specialist promoting the firm’s LGBT inclusion w

In the first of her interview series for Scottish Legal News, legal journalist Margaret Taylor interviews Angela Grahame on her time as Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Advocates.  Angela Grahame QC didn’t just break the mould when she became Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Advocates, she complete

Margaret Taylor interviews Robbie Brodie of Livingstone Brown on his recent triumph at the Court of Session. When Lord Boyd of Duncansby ruled last month that an Ayr-based adult day care centre must remain open for the foreseeable future he delivered a victory not just to the father who had filed th