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A family judge has rejected 28 “DIY divorce” applications after couples who used an unregulated website gave the exact same reasons for wanting to divorce. Mr Justice Moor said it was “quite impossible” that each of the respondents would behave in exactly the same manner and

Drunken villagers in India are being locked in cages and taunted by schoolchildren in order to deter them from alcoholism. The punishment, first devised in Motipura in the state of Gujarat, sees drunkards placed in a rusty cage until they pay a fine.

A sheriff has ruled that the purported assignee of a standard security had no title to enforce it against the original granter and was in breach of court rules by not lodging an unredacted version of the assignation it founded upon with the court. Giovanni Guidi granted a registered standard securit

An effective response to attacks on judicial independence should come from the bar, a senior American judge told an audience in Edinburgh last night. Nathan L. Hecht, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, delivered the Scottish Council of Law Reporting's 11th annual MacFadyen lecture on the t

Simpson & Marwick’s David Coutts has become dual accredited in both family and child law by the Law Society of Scotland. The accolade is a recognition of a solicitor’s proven specialist knowledge and is designed to help the public identify experts in each area of law, particularly in

Burness Paull has become the first law firm to use Pawprint, rolling out Pawprint for Business firmwide as part of it commitment to improving its sustainability and carbon footprint. Pawprint for Business helps businesses to support their employees in tackling climate change. Employees are able to m

Thorntons has welcomed five new solicitors in a move that signals its continuing growth and expansion.

Northern Ireland’s Public Prosecution Service has defended its decision to prosecute Army veteran Dennis Hutchings over a Troubles shooting. Mr Hutchings, 83, died in Belfast on Monday after contracting Covid.

Poland is at loggerheads with the EU again as the rule of law dispute between Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and the bloc deepens. At the European Parliament, Mr Morawiecki clashed with European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, accusing the EU of blackmail. The incident follows the ruling o

Commuters on the Moscow metro can now pay for their journeys by glancing at a camera in what has been described as an "Orwellian” surveillance tool. Face Pay lets users look into a camera at turnstiles in the capital's 241 metro stations instead of using a card.

A defence lawyer in Japan is going head to head with a judge who ordered him not to recharge his laptop in court because the electricity supply was "owned by the state". Takashi Takano has appealed to the Tokyo High Court after Taro Kageyama, of the Yokohama District Court, made him unplug his machi

A 96-year-old woman who was a secretary at a Nazi concentration camp has gone on trial for complicity in the murder of more than 11,000 people, weeks after she attempted to flee proceedings. Irmgard Furchner was 18 when she began working at Stutthof camp in Nazi-occupied Poland as secretary to its c

A judge in the Outer House of the Court of Session has ruled that the operators of a store in a shopping centre in Glasgow were in breach of a court order obliging them to keep the store open but that their actions were not in contempt of court. Sapphire 16 SARL, the landlord under a lease of the pr

Attempts to make online courts the default forum for civil justice do not "make any sense" and are "very much second best" to conducting legal business in person, experts have told Scottish Legal News. Draft rules prepared by the Scottish Civil Justice Council – which are currently out for con

Scotland's three principal bar associations have voted to opt out of a duty solicitor scheme less than two weeks before the most important conference in the world due to continued mistreatment of defence lawyers.