Lawyer of the Month

When Nicola Rylatt lost her husband Chris to suicide in 2017 it made her reassess her work priorities. The couple had been married for a year and, having begun her career as an asylum and immigration lawyer before moving to Swiss-based NGO Shelter Centre, Ms Rylatt was working in the Geneva office o

When Janys Scott QC was asked to represent 27 church leaders in a case relating to whether the Covid-induced closure of churches was lawful, she jumped at the chance. It was, she says, not only an opportunity to test a novel point of law but to explore questions relating to her own faith as well. &l

SLN's Lawyer of the Month for April, Emma Toner, is the first woman editor of Session Cases. This year marks the law reports' bicentenary, on the occasion of which the Scottish Council of Law Reporting is running a poll to determine the most popular of the Session Cases. Nominate your favourite

With a father who was a procurator fiscal and two older siblings who had entered the legal profession too, meal-time conversations in Calum MacNeill’s childhood home were very much focused on the law. Given that background, it is perhaps unsurprising that the young Mr MacNeill was determined t

Fishing rights may have been one of the main sticking points of the Brexit negotiations, but not all recent fish-related battles have been waged between Britain and Brussels. In a case that played out much closer to home, the Scottish Creel Fishermen’s Federation (SCFF) challenged the Scottish

There cannot be many advocates who would willingly compare themselves to a notorious despot, but Black Chambers’ Tony Lenehan is one. Having replaced Ronnie Renucci QC as president of the Scottish Criminal Bar Association (SCBA) at the tail-end of last year, Mr Lenehan likens his ascension to

When a school teacher told the teenage Iain Smith he should downgrade his ambition to become a lawyer and focus on becoming a paralegal instead, it could have gone one of two ways: he could have thrown in the towel there and then or he could have resolved to work harder than ever to prove it was the

Much has been said about the plight of criminal defence lawyers in recent years, from the inadequacy of legal aid fees to the impracticality of working hours. Almost all of it has been from the point of view of practitioners with decades of experience in the sector, though. McGovern Reid solicitor M

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 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

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

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

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