Lawyer of the Month

As one of Scotland’s busiest trial counsel, Thomas Leonard Ross QC is well-known for passionately fighting for justice – in the courtroom and out of it. Most recently he has been a vocal opponent of the proposal that the historical right to trial by jury be removed where serious sexual o

Scotland's long-running police drama Taggart had a pivotal role to play in the career choice of Emma Forbes, principal procurator fiscal depute with the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS). It was while watching an episode with her family when she was still at school that she first he

Despite having started studying law at the tender age of 16, Stuart Munro, managing director of Livingstone Brown, didn't have a burning desire to join the profession in his formative years. Instead, he describes it as something he “fell into”. At his local school he was expected to do w

Although Rosalie Chadwick had aspirations of being a fighter pilot, not a lawyer, she eventually decided to take the latter option partly because of what she describes as her stubborn streak. That desire to stand up to opposition, rather than shy away from heated discussion, is likely to serve her w

Licensing law, Stephen McGowan acknowledges, can be “extremely difficult to fathom”. He speaks as an expert, being both the head of licensing (Scotland) at TLT and the author of three books on the subject – the latest of which, the recently published McGowan on Alcohol Licensing La

International defamation lawyer Paul Tweed, partner and founder of Gateley Tweed, was recently profiled by our sister publication Irish Legal News. We include his interview with Margaret Taylor below. Given his reputation as a libel lawyer who has never lost a case, it is little wonder that Gateley

The renewed attention brought to mental health law by the Scottish government’s ongoing review under John Scott QC renders David W Cobb’s new book particularly timely. Published this month, A Practical Guide to the Sheriff Court and Protecting Vulnerable Adults in Scotland not only provi

After two decades running the IP practice at Burness Paull, Colin Hulme is well practised in defending his clients’ intellectual property rights. That does not mean there is nothing left for him to learn, though, which is why he has begun trialling a new form of rights-enforcement exercise: a

When Nicola Rylatt lost her husband Chris to suicide in 2017 it made her reassess her work priorities. The couple had been married for a year and, having begun her career as an asylum and immigration lawyer before moving to Swiss-based NGO Shelter Centre, Ms Rylatt was working in the Geneva office o

When Janys Scott QC was asked to represent 27 church leaders in a case relating to whether the Covid-induced closure of churches was lawful, she jumped at the chance. It was, she says, not only an opportunity to test a novel point of law but to explore questions relating to her own faith as well. &l

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

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

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