Features

Pinsent Masons' Scottish corporate team looks back on 2022, having advised on deals worth billions of pounds in various sectors, and discusses its outlook for the year ahead. The stand-out deal in the last 12 months was Ithaca Energy’s £2.5 billion listing on the main London Stock Exchan

Andrew Stevenson relates a tale of paperclips and confusion. My first fumbling attempt to raise an action in the Court of Session taught me a little about the law but a great deal more about the importance of paperclips and heraldry. The contents of the document posed no problem at all, despite the

Dr Felicity Loughlin, lecturer in the history of modern Christianity at Edinburgh University, writes about Scotland’s last persecution for blasphemy as a criminal offence, and what this can tell us about changing attitudes towards religion and free speech in the Victorian age. In 1837, a

Roland Smyth discusses the challenges facing the tourism industry in Scotland as a result of Covid and Brexit and suggests ways to address these issues including investment in staff training, public sector support, and a focus on ESG issues to make the industry more attractive to a wider talent pool

Alan Shanks, head of Scotland at Addleshaw Goddard, reflects on 2022 and looks at what lies ahead in 2023 for the firm and for the wider Scottish landscape. Like many businesses, we approach 2023 with a degree of caution given the macro-economic and geopolitical challenges that will continue to impa

Although the pandemic feels like a lifetime ago, the context of unpredictability in connection to the lockdown, unemployment, several restrictions and the changes in today’s standard of living have impacted mental health severely. In a research conducted by Mind, around one in three adults and

Dr Alessandra Asteriti gives her opinion on a UN expert's advice to a Holyrood committee on the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill. On 13 December 2022, Victor Madrigal-Borloz, the UN Independent Expert on Protection Against Violence and Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation an

It’s not an insignificant mark of regard of one’s peers for an advocate to be elected Clerk of Faculty as Barney Ross was last month following a six-way contest. It’s also one about which he is typically self-effacing, and he gently points out that his observations are made in a pe

Dr Paul Behrens, a member of the Ending Conversion Practices Expert Advisory Group, responds to criticism of its recent report. Reports by experts tend to be read by experts only, then shelved forever. You can certainly not say the same about the report by the Scottish Expert Advisory Group on Endin

Energy companies are having to keep on top of often complex employment rules and regulations if their offshore rig crews feature personnel from overseas. It’s a particular issue if they were used to hiring European nationals pre-Brexit and are therefore unfamiliar with the sponsorship routes,

In a world increasingly obsessed with celebrities, influencers and social media, professional footballers playing in the FIFA World Cup in Qatar have never been in a brighter spotlight, writes Ally Burr. The FIFA World Cup is one of the most watched sporting events in the world. From sticker books,

Pauline Hughes outlines the implications of changes to flexible working laws. The Scottish government has recently announced that they will soon be passing new legislation around flexible working, updating the current rules to, ironically, make the scheme more flexible for employees.

Scottish Legal News spoke to Niamh Hargan about her busy life as a media lawyer and novelist. Lawyer by day and writer by night – literally – Niamh Hargan juggles a demanding job in media law while penning novels in her spare time.

Products containing the mineral talc are set to be removed from UK shelves amid fears they may contain asbestos material following a rise in litigation in the United States, write David Short and Peter Littlefair. Putting profits over product safety has been the battleground for product liability ca

Recently I attended events which got me thinking about the kind of society we are now living in – and the role of the legal profession in it. At the Scottish Mediation conference, Professor Gurchathen Sanghera, a specialist in peace, conflict and violence from the School of International Relat