Colin Cardwell

For many lawyers, alighting on a specialist area of the profession means assessing one’s personal interests and career opportunities. When Usman Aslam immersed himself in immigration and asylum law, however, it stemmed from deeply personal reasons. Born in Pakistan, Mr Aslam had come to Scotla

Last November was another significant point in Jen Paton’s career trajectory. The Edinburgh-based legal director in Shoosmiths’ corporate division had been named Corporate Rising Star of the Year at the influential Legal 500 Scotland Awards held in the city. For Ms Paton it was an opport

These have been interesting times at Glasgow corporate law firm Macdonald Henderson. October 2024 alone saw the firm advise on 14 deals and last week it announced the acquisition of Ferguson Whyte Solicitors, gaining it a presence in the Glasgow’s West End as well as its Hope Street office in

When Gilson Gray LLP appointed David Winnie to lead its sports offering in May this year, he arrived with a distinct advantage. Heading up the firm’s new sports and immigration specialism and working alongside its corporate team, Mr Winnie is not only a solicitor with 15 years’ experienc

It could be tempting after two decades of establishing a successful reputation in a particular sector of the law to continue to plough the same furrow and enjoy the degree of regularity that brings. Not so for Neil Hay who pivoted, as he puts it, from 20 years working in legal aid defence toward a n

Plug and Play. It’s a catchy little phrase when it comes to running a law firm, but Brian Inkster isn’t overly concerned with preserving tradition and the approach he has developed over the past 25 years has seen Inksters Solicitors grow from a practice primarily specialising in crofting

The first in her extended family to go to university, intellectual property specialist Lesley Larg was appointed as Dundee-based solicitors Thorntons' first female managing partner in 2021, taking over from Craig Nicol who held the post for 10 years, seven of those years as joint managing partn

Change isn’t an option anymore; it’s mandatory. This dictum, of course, has had multiple iterations in all areas of business since any wistful idea that more of the same will suffice was atomised by a climate emergency, a global pandemic, a war in Europe and a series of economic debacles

At a cursory glance, the minimum legal requirements for producing Scotch Whisky appear to be deceptively simple. The spirit can only be made in Scotland from just three natural ingredients – water, yeast and cereals – and must be matured in oak casks for a minimum of three year

Laura Cameron’s dream of becoming a dentist when growing up in Perth was thwarted by an unfortunate and insuperable drawback: her aversion to the sight of blood. “Although I studied sciences at school and got the grades, after a few dissections in the biology lab I realised fairly early

It’s not an insignificant mark of regard of one’s peers for an advocate to be elected Clerk of Faculty as Barney Ross was last month following a six-way contest. It’s also one about which he is typically self-effacing, and he gently points out that his observations are made in a pe

Jennifer Jack says that she was an early speaker. “My mother tells me that one of my first words was ‘organised’ – which perhaps set me on the path to becoming a lawyer,” she smiles. It’s certainly a quality that her job – as the partner leading Ha

There’s a chilly wind blowing around many of our farmhouse doors. With some 80 per cent of Scotland’s land under agricultural production and the agri-food sector now the largest area of manufacturing in the UK, farmers and growers are currently facing new threats to their livelihoods not