News

DWF has been awarded the “Closing the Education Gap” accolade at this year’s Scottish Business in the Community (SBC) awards. At last night’s event, which was attended by the president of SBC, HRH Prince Charles, Duke of Rothesay, DWF was recognised for its innovative education programme 5 S

Naomi Pryde This week's SLN Spotlight falls on Naomi Pryde, a litigation and dispute resolution solicitor at Matthew Arnold & Baldwin LLP in London. Naomi was recently elected to the Law Society of Scotland's Council, where she will represent the constituency of England & Wales.

The House of Commons Library has noted the absence of proposals on welfare from the Scotland Bill. The proposals were drawn up during the cross-party Smith Commission talks but the principle that discretionary additional benefits must provide extra income is missing while the idea of “no detriment

Ben Zielinski (pictured) discusses the Court of Session's reiteration that commercial common sense is only relevant to interpreting the terms of a contract if those terms are ambiguous. Where the words used are clear and not open to more than one interpretation, a court must give them their natural

John Henderson & Sons LLP, Dumfries, have announced that associate, Mark Marshall (pictured) was recently appointed partner of the firm. Mr Marshall qualified as a solicitor and notary public in 2007 after undertaking a specialist litigation traineeship with one of the country’s largest person

Back row (L-R): Debbie Dewar, Cheryl Wallace, Caroline Pigott, Jack Robertson, Scott Milne Front row (L-R): Lindsay Bryce, Gemma McClelland, Robin Beattie, Lisa Mannion, Aimee Gibbons, Lauren Rae, Kim McNaughton, Lynsay McFarlane

Scottish landowners will have to accept "the public responsibilities that come with that ownership" following the introduction of new land reform legislation. Land reform minister Aileen McLeod (pictured) pledged to end "the stop start nature of historic land reform" as she published new draft legis

The Scottish Arbitration Survey, a joint initiative involving the University of Aberdeen, Burness Paull LLP and the Law Society of Scotland, has published its first report. Report No 1 covers the period from 1 July 2013 to 30 June 2014. The report provides statistics relative to the occurrence of ar

Michael Matheson The Scottish government will build a new women's prison at Cornton Vale as part of a new strategy on women offenders, Justice Secretary Michael Matheson has announced.

Sir Crispin Agnew of Lochnaw Bt QC (pictured), senior counsel at Westwater Advocates, has completed the 50-mile Edinburgh Night Ride challenge. Sir Crispin embarked on the race to raise almost £3,000 for Westwater Advocates' chosen charity Dyslexia Scotland, which works to improve awareness and att

The Faculty of Advocates will play a part in broadening the horizons of eleven Scots teenagers taking part in a "Through the Looking Glass" initiative. The charity initiative aims to open unexpected career avenues for gifted young students from less affluent areas by giving them an insight into prof

Lord Carloway

The Law Society of Scotland has expressed concerns about the "lack of evidence" to support Scottish government moves to end automatic early release for long-term prisoners. The organisation issued its warning ahead of the stage 3 debate of the Prisoners (Control of Release) (Scotland) Bill in the Sc

Scotland’s chief law officer has been granted a court order to recover the combined voice and flight data recorder from a Super Puma helicopter which crashed into the North Sea in 2013 and killed four of the passengers on board. A judge in the Court of Session ruled that the CVFDR should be made a

Kath Murray Police stop and search figures are dropping in Scotland but the practice remains far more common than it is south of the border, research shows.