News

The Scottish Prison Service's waiting list for sexual offending rehabilitation programmes would take 14 years to clear, according to new figures. The SPS was urged by Emma Jardine, policy and public affairs manager at Howard League Scotland, to increase the transparency over access to such schemes.

Legislation to help reduce the high prison population has been passed by the Scottish Parliament. The Prisoners (Early Release) (Scotland) Bill will change the release point for offenders serving sentences of less than four years from 50 per cent of their sentence to 40 per cent. There will be no ch

An online system to assist trainees and junior solicitors in drafting legal correspondence has won the Law Society of Scotland’s 2024 Innovation Cup. The judges selected Andrew Logue – an Aberdeen-based associate with Clyde & Co – for his proposed tool to facilitate collaborati

The Scottish Human Rights Commission has reported challenges with accessing human rights to health, housing, and food across the Highlands and Islands. Critical issues include an apparent failure to meet the most basic international obligations related to the right to health, the right to housing an

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has been excoriated as "incompetent at best, dishonest at worst" in a new report from MPs and peers. The culmination of a three-year inquiry involving testimony from 175 individuals, the report highlights the FCA's failure to protect consumers and small business

The FCA has fined Barclays £40 million in total for its failure to disclose certain arrangements with Qatari entities in 2008. This follows Barclays' decision to withdraw its referral of the FCA's planned action to the Upper Tribunal. The action was based on findings which included that Barcla

There was a one per cent increase in crime in the year to September 2024, new figures from Scotland’s chief statistician show. The police recorded 300,134 crimes in the year ending September 2024. This was one per cent higher than the 297,425 crimes recorded in the year ending September 2023,

Hunter & Robertson Solicitors won the Renfrewshire Chamber of Commerce 2024 Award for Outstanding Performing Business (5-25 employees) recently.

A two-kilogram garden gnome made entirely out of MDMA has been seized by police in the Netherlands. The fairy creature, with a suitably mischievous countenance, was discovered in a drugs stash by the Dongemond police force in the south of the country.

Orkney solicitor Serena Sutherland has been nominated as president-elect 2026-27 of the Law Society of Scotland. Ms Sutherland was elected to the society's Council in July 2018, representing solicitors in Dingwall, Dornoch, Elgin, Inverness, Kirkwall, Lerwick, Lochmaddy, Portree, Stornoway, Tain and

Simone Callaghan won the Rising Star Award at the Scottish Paralegal Christmas Dinner Dance on Saturday. Ms Callaghan is an accredited paralegal in debt recovery at TC Young.

Animal welfare charity OneKind and conservation charity Scottish Badgers and 11 MSPs gathered outside the Scottish Parliament yesterday to celebrate Scotland’s snaring ban that has come into force.

A case on servitudes is the subject of a new article on the Edinburgh Private Law Blog. "In a recent case, AC & IC Fraser & Son Limited v Munro [2024] SAC (Civ) 41, the Sheriff Appeal Court was faced with two issues relating to the law of servitudes: firstly, whether a landowner’s inac

The first round of a national school debating tournament has kicked off, with students across Scotland debating whether zoos should remain open. In the 25th year of the Law Society of Scotland’s Donald Dewar Memorial Debating Tournament, the first round debates saw the motion “This house

Plans for a new European convention protecting the profession of lawyer have been approved in draft. The European Committee on Legal Co-operation (CDCJ) last week approved the draft text prepared by the Committee of Experts on the Protection of Lawyers (CJ-AV), which was established for that purpose