Features

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

May 8th 2020 marked the 75th anniversary of VE Day – the end of the Second World War in Europe. During the six long years of conflict, the WS Society kept a scrapbook of news about Writers to the Signet in service at home and abroad. James Hamilton introduces this poignant resource. One mornin

SLN's editor reviews Trials of the State: Law and the Decline of Politics by Jonathan Sumption. Though apt to be caricatured as some sort of anti-judge in the post-prorogation world, iconoclast jurist Jonathan Sumption—in this, his first popular legal book—echoes Montesquieu wh

Robert Pirrie WS, chief executive of the WS Society, tells the story of William Roughead, the Edinburgh lawyer who became the father of the ‘true crime’ genre and the celebrated trial for murder of Miss Madelaine Smith. Amongst the many remarkable collections of the Signet Library,

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

This week marks the 30th anniversary of the world’s largest unsolved art theft, in which 13 pieces worth around $500 million, including paintings by famous artists such as Rembrandt, Vermeer, Degas and Manet, were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.

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

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

He has attained folk hero status as a sort of Scottish Robin Hood and at Burns Suppers around the country this weekend his execution will be recalled with performances of ‘Macpherson’s Farewell’ also known as Macpherson’s ‘Rant’ or ‘Lament’. But who wa

It might be stretching things a bit to describe this football match in 1980 as part of our legal heritage but it does reflect the days when local faculties ran their own football teams – a practice now in decline – although we were pleased yesterday to report that the Glasgow Bar is mak

As a young lawyer, or ‘writer’, in the county town of Perth in the 1820s, Duncan Clark was a pillar of the community and a model of respectability.

Irish barrister Andrew McKeown critically examines the proposals put forward by legal tech expert Professor Richard Susskind in his latest book. Online Courts and the Future of Justice is a fascinating read for lawyers and non-lawyers alike. It is clear that Professor Susskind is sincerely

When adherents of a pre-World War One nudist craze in Germany decided to establish a club, their decision to name it after an 18th century Scottish judge seemed the most natural thing in the world. Berlin's Monboddo Bund remains one of the more unusual salutes to the Scottish judiciary but is testam