Margaret Taylor

Margaret Taylor interviews Digby Brown's Chris Stewart, whose team was last year named Catastrophic Injury Team of the Year at the 2020 Personal Injury Awards. As head of Digby Brown’s catastrophic injury department, Chris Stewart represents people whose lives have been complete

SLN's Lawyer of the Month for April, Emma Toner, is the first woman editor of Session Cases. This year marks the law reports' bicentenary, on the occasion of which the Scottish Council of Law Reporting is running a poll to determine the most popular of the Session Cases. Nominate your favourite

With a father who was a procurator fiscal and two older siblings who had entered the legal profession too, meal-time conversations in Calum MacNeill’s childhood home were very much focused on the law. Given that background, it is perhaps unsurprising that the young Mr MacNeill was determined t

Fishing rights may have been one of the main sticking points of the Brexit negotiations, but not all recent fish-related battles have been waged between Britain and Brussels. In a case that played out much closer to home, the Scottish Creel Fishermen’s Federation (SCFF) challenged the Scottish

When Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf announced plans for increased fees and a series of grants in the dying days of 2020, he said he was offering up a “significant package of support” for legal aid practitioners who had “worked hard since the Covid-19 outbreak to help maintain acces

There cannot be many advocates who would willingly compare themselves to a notorious despot, but Black Chambers’ Tony Lenehan is one. Having replaced Ronnie Renucci QC as president of the Scottish Criminal Bar Association (SCBA) at the tail-end of last year, Mr Lenehan likens his ascension to

As the year comes to a close with Christmas all but cancelled, it is hard to imagine that any good has come from Covid-19. For Morton Fraser partner David Hossack, however, one positive to come out of the coronavirus pandemic is that it has helped to highlight the role mediation can play in the reso

When a school teacher told the teenage Iain Smith he should downgrade his ambition to become a lawyer and focus on becoming a paralegal instead, it could have gone one of two ways: he could have thrown in the towel there and then or he could have resolved to work harder than ever to prove it was the

Criminal defence work may be a tough gig, but for an aspiring writer of crime fiction it has one key draw: it throws up a huge amount of material to work from. Indeed, when Russel & Aitken partner William McIntyre decided to turn his hand to novel writing a little over a decade ago he found he h

Much has been said about the plight of criminal defence lawyers in recent years, from the inadequacy of legal aid fees to the impracticality of working hours. Almost all of it has been from the point of view of practitioners with decades of experience in the sector, though. McGovern Reid solicitor M

After she left her role at Burness Paull to join London media practice Simkins, Fiona McAllister – now a lawyer at Channel 4 – began looking for an extra-curricular activity that would allow her to contribute to society while at the same time not being too closely related to her day job.

Balfour & Manson partner Robert Holland is convinced that employment is the best practice area for a lawyer to work in because it offers what he describes as the “best combination of black-letter law with a human-interest angle”. As head of his firm’s employment practice he wou

When Amanda Millar put herself forward to become president of the Law Society of Scotland she wanted to make a difference to her profession during a time of considerable challenges. What she did not know back in the relative calm of 2018 was that by the time she took over from John Mulholland in Jun

If there is one thing the Scotch whisky industry could have done without this year it is a global pandemic. The sector, which employs 11,000 people and contributes billions of pounds to the UK economy each year, was still reeling from the impact of tariffs introduced by US President Donald Trump las

When disputes specialist Rachael Bicknell flew out to New Zealand at the beginning of this year the plan was to enjoy a break with her in-laws in a coastal paradise on New Zealand’s North Island. Then the coronavirus pandemic hit, and a trip that was supposed to last just a few weeks began str