Reading time: 7 minutes
Sheriff Simon Collins KC has issued his determination following a fatal accident inquiry into the deaths by suicide of Katie Allan and William Brown, which occurred at HM Prison and Young Offenders Institution Polmont. Katie, 21, was found dead in her cell on 4 June 2018. William, 16, was found dead
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Boutique Edinburgh firm Connell and Connell has promoted solicitor Chloe Davidson to associate. Ms Davidson, a specialist in Scottish residential property, joined Connell and Connell from D J Alexander Legal and has been with the firm since 2020.
2 minutes
Mackinnons Solicitors LLP has announced recent promotions across the firm. Gillian Smith becomes a senior associate within the private client department while Cameron Milne is elevated to the role of senior solicitor within the commercial department.
2 minutes
Scotland’s legal sector has made a strong start to 2025, with 103 new solicitors formally welcomed to the profession in central Edinburgh yesterday.
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The Lady Chief Justice of England and Wales, Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the-Hill, has appointed Lord Fairley to be president of the Employment Appeal Tribunal. He succeeds Mrs Justice Eady with effect from 1 February 2025.
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Slater and Gordon’s presence in Scotland is continuing to grow with the addition of a leading name in clinical negligence to its team. Derek Couper becomes the firm’s new head of medical negligence in Scotland, having built a reputation as a specialist in clinical negligence work through
1 minute
McKennas Law Practice has promoted assistant solicitor Lucy Anne Boylen to associate.
Reading time: 3 minutes
Scotland's legal aid crisis looks like it could be "unsolvable" as more than a third of legal aid lawyers are set to retire in the next decade. There are currently 911 solicitors registered for legal aid – down from 1,084 in 2020, a drop of 16 per cent.
1 minute
Tony Lenehan KC remains the top earner of legal aid fees, new figures from the Scottish Legal Aid Board show. In 2023-24, Mr Lenehan's fees were £450,000, an increase of £50,000 on the previous year.
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Criminal lawyers south of the border are to withdraw from legal aid work over a pay dispute with ministers. The Law Society is to advise its members to consider withdrawing from legal aid work or scaling it back until the UK government provides a "meaningful response" to lawyers' demands.
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Lord Chancellor Alex Chalk is being taken to the High Court by lawyers who say legal aid fees are so low they cannot provide representation to thousands of people. The case revolves around access to legal aid for immigration and asylum lawyers and is being brought by Duncan Lewis solicitors.
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The Law Society of Scotland is to withdraw from discussions on the creation of a review mechanism for legal aid fees, stating it had "lost confidence" in the Scottish government project following a lack of progress in two years. The Legal Aid Remuneration Project and Research Analysis Group were set
Reading time: 2 minutes
Dr Rozemarijn Roland Holst has been awarded over £128,000 by the Leverhulme Trust for a three-year project entitled ‘The Making and Unmaking of Global Commons by International Organisations’. Global commons, areas outside national jurisdiction of states such as the high seas, Antar
1 minute
Edinburgh Law School's Professor James Harrison is to deliver his inaugural lecture on a fundamental question of environmental legal scholarship: how much environmental protection can we expect environmental law to deliver? Whilst protection of the environment is undoubtedly the underlying obj
3 minutes
A University of Dundee study will give volunteer jurors from across Scotland the opportunity to deliver their verdict on the future of digital crime fighting. The university’s Leverhulme Research Centre for Forensic Science (LRCFS) is recruiting members of the public as part of research focusi
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Dundee Law School has become the first in Scotland to establish a module in trauma-informed practice as part of its diploma course. The module will prepare students to support clients seeking legal advice while they are affected by traumatic life events.
1 minute
A new booklet celebrates the women of Strathclyde Law School as it celebrates its diamond jubilee this year. It states: "The idea for the booklet dates to 2022 when Claire McDiarmid and Rebecca Zahn decided to embark on a project to collate the memories that women academics have of their time in the
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The Moon has been named as a threatened heritage site in anticipation of future commercial lunar landings. The World Monuments Fund (WMF), a charity founded in the 1960s, named the Moon among 25 sites on its 2025 watchlist – the first time that it has included a site in outer space, The Art Ne
1 minute
Monkeys with discerning tastes have been accused of robbing a house of gold jewellery. The simians allegedly broke into the home in Talalla, in southern Sri Lanka, while the residents were working in the garden.
2 minutes
An online scammer tricked a woman out of more than €800,000 using AI-generated pictures of Brad Pitt. The 53-year-old French woman, named only as Anne, recently appeared on a French TV show to recount her story, saying that she was entirely convinced that the Hollywood star had fallen in love w
2 minutes
A ban on flying "foreign flags" on flagpoles has come into effect in Denmark. As of 1 January 2025, the only flags that can lawfully be raised are those of Denmark and its autonomous territories, the Faroe Islands and Greenland, as well as the other Nordic countries, neighbouring Germany and interna
1 minute
A police officer has admitted he crashed into another motorist because he was watching porn on his phone. Tristan Macomber, an officer in Lake County, Florida, initially lied about what he was doing when he rear-ended another vehicle while on duty in early November 2024, local TV channel WESH r
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