News

An action for damages for "loss of society" brought by the biological siblings of a person who was adopted into another family and later died has been dismissed. A judge in the Court of Session ruled that the biological members of the family of a person who has been adopted have "no title to sue" fo

Stephen Gibb Shepherd and Wedderburn has announced a third consecutive year of growth. In its latest results for the year ending 30 April 2016, the firm’s revenue grew by more than 11 per cent to £53 million with profits increasing by 20 per cent to £21.5m. Solid growth was recorded across the f

Lord Campbell A new Act of Union that would “wrest back the initiative from the separatists” and create a federal Britain has been proposed by a cross-party parliamentary group in a new draft bill.

Neil Stevenson

Regulations laid at Westminster today will begin the transfer of powers to enable the Scottish Parliament to start legislating on social security and employability. The powers will include the ability to implement new arrangements to support people in receipt of benefits to be devolved, and the long

James McNeill

Paul Seils The International Center for Transitional Justice in New York has published a new handbook for non-specialists, journalists and activists, that walks them through the intricacies of “complementarity,” a fundamental principle of the International Criminal Court (ICC). It lays out the i

Robin McGill has been appointed a member of the Scottish Police Authority Board. Mr McGill worked across the BP Group for 30 years in engineering, operations and international business leadership roles ultimately becoming director of the BP Grangemouth Refining and Petrochemicals complex and Forties

Money paid out in advance for items from sofas to mobile phones and services such as football season tickets and even weddings can be lost if the company you are buying from goes under – especially if you have paid by cash or cheque. In a report published this week the Law Commission recommends th

The Supreme Court has unanimously allowed a legal charity’s appeal against the Lord Chancellor to introduce a residence test for civil legal aid on the basis it is ultra vires. Following a hearing at which the court heard argument on the ultra vires issue and indicated that it did not need to hear

Angela Grahame QC

Mark Hastings Within the evolving legal landscape of personal injury, lies a piece of legislation to which pursuers’ firms are becoming more alive when considering the merits of an injured party’s claim, particularly in the pre-litigation stage, writes Mark Hastings.

Peers have warned that the Investigatory Powers Bill poses a threat to journalists and their sources. The House of Lords heard that the bill, which seeks to put the state’s surveillance powers on a statutory footing, needs safeguards for journalists.

Michael Kelly In the first of a series of blogs for The Scotsman, MacRoberts' partner Michael Kelly charts the collapse of his father’s business just before the financial crisis and how he and his brothers helped it emerge from this “dark period” with a “brutally challenging” first three y

Dominic Scullion