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A new fully digital process for simple procedure cases is ready to be rolled out next Thursday, the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service (SCTS) has said. Civil Online was initially introduced in March last year to allow parties to track the progress of cases in court and was further enhanced in Dec

A retired Supreme Court justice has said there is "no moral obligation to obey the law" in a major intervention over the legality of assisted suicide. Jonathan Sumption QC, who retired from the Supreme Court bench last December, said he believed the law "should be broken from time to time".

Alison McAteer, senior solicitor at Brodies LLP and president of Tomorrow’s FOIL (Forum of Insurance Lawyers), and Megan Lafferty, associate at Clyde & Co (Scotland LLP) and Scottish representative of Tomorrow's FOIL, write on the issues facing insurance lawyers in Scotland. In 2018, GDPR

Applications are now being invited for Faculty of Advocates scholarships which can help ease financial tensions during the training period for the Bar. Those hoping to begin devilling in 2020 are asked to submit applications by the end of this month, to be considered by the Faculty’s Scholarsh

Alyson Cowan, solicitor in the commercial real estate team at Morton Fraser, writes on the importance of limitation clauses in collateral warranties. The recently published judgment of O’Farrell J in Swansea Stadium Management Co. Ltd v Swansea City and County Council ([2018] EWHC 2192 (TCC))

The latest statistics from the UK House Price Index (HPI) show that the average price of a property in Scotland in February 2019 was £145,762 – a decrease of 0.2 per cent on February in the previous year. This is the first annual decrease in the average price of a property in Scotland si

Controversial UK government plans to bring in the world's first age-verification system for online pornography are set to come into force in July. The commencement of the relevant provisions of the Digital Economy Act 2017 has been repeatedly delayed, having originally been set for April 2018 and la

The UK's competition regulator has shied away from meaningful change of the accountancy industry after ignoring recommendations for a major shake-up in a move critics have described as a missed “golden opportunity”. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) stopped short of callin

Police Scotland must ensure that all police officers receive appropriate training and guidance in assessing missing person reports, the Police Investigations & Review Commissioner (PIRC) has said. The watchdog has published a report which concludes that there was a delay in police going to the f

An English solicitor who said her professional reputation had been destroyed by a Facebook post has lost her £900,000 libel claim. The High Court in London ruled that lawyers for Dr Katherine Alexander-Theodotou, of Highgate Hill Solicitors, had not established that the post had caused "seriou

An Orthodox priest in Russia has been relocated to a remote village in a bizarre act of punishment after his wife won a beauty pageant. Sergei Zotov was dismissed from his post and sent to a village of just 4,000 people around 65 kilometres away.

Two asylum seekers who claimed that it was “unlawful” for their housing provider to evict them by changing the locks to their homes without first obtaining a court order for their removal have had their legal challenges dismissed. In a test case, a judge in the Court of Session dismissed

Turcan Connell has announced the appointment of Gillian Crandles as its new managing partner. One of the country’s leading divorce lawyers, Ms Crandles is only the second person to occupy this role in the firm’s 22-year history and will combine it with her current position as head of div

Wright, Johnston & Mackenzie LLP has announced the appointment of two new partners at its Inverness office. Paul Adams and JP Campbell, who both joined the team in 2018 as associates, have been promoted to partners at the law firm's Highland branch.

Landmark legislation which provided a legal basis for real burdens following the abolition of feudal tenure is too difficult to apply in practice and should be reformed, the Scottish Law Commission has said. The legal reform body has published a new report recommending the replacement of section 53