News

A new system of regulation claiming to promote "accountability, transparency and independence" is being proposed to "meet the needs of the legal sector and consumers". A consultation has been launched today and will run until 24 December to seek views on options to change the way legal services are

A new approach to interviews for vulnerable child victims and witnesses is to be rolled out across Scotland. The Scottish government is funding the £2 million initiative – which involves pre-recorded investigative interviews of children conducted jointly by police officers and social wor

Alastair Smith takes up his new role as a director at Lindsays from today, while Darren Lightfoot and Brian Pollock have become senior associates. Mr Smith’s directorship is in the corporate and technology team and he is based across the firms’ offices in Edinburgh, Dundee and Glasgow. H

Professor Donna McKenzie-Skene, of Aberdeen University's School of Law, has retired after 29 years of service. She joined the school as a lecturer in 1992 and was promoted first to senior lecturer in 1999 and to professor earlier this year. Before joining the university, she was a court lawyer for f

Charmaine Trainor has been promoted to executive director at Scullion LAW. Ms Trainor began her career at Scullion LAW nine years ago and has progressed from working in the firm's reception.

A solicitor who encouraged a client to invest in a firm that had links to a rogue businessman has been struck off for professional misconduct by the Scottish Solicitors' Discipline Tribunal (SSDT). Kenneth Macleod, 85, used funds to invest in the company in the knowledge police had raised serious co

Thorntons has welcomed six further trainee solicitors this September. This follows an earlier intake of ten trainees in March of this year.

Complainants are waiting more than 600 days for justice after reporting a crime – a rise of more than 50 per cent in the past year. Figures from the Ministry of Justice show that in the second quarter of this year, the time between a crime occurring and a case being resolved in court was 622 d

A group of parents are suing California over schools' "promotion" of Aztec gods and deities who were once honoured with human sacrifice. Part of a new model curriculum on ethnic studies invites pupils to chant about Tezkatlipoka, Quetzalkoatl, Huitzilopochtli, and Xipe Totek.

A judge in the Outer House of the Court of Session has found that the owner of a farm in Fife was not liable for injuries inflicted on a teenage stable hand by a racehorse that was stabled there. Milly Morrison sought reparations of £50,000 in solatium from James Oakden for a head injury and s

The Scottish government's 13-year delay in establishing an inquiry into childhood abuse in care was "woeful and wholly avoidable", a judge has said. Lady Smith, chair of the inquiry, made the comments in relation to the Scottish government’s response to a petition made to Holyrood in 2002 seek

Wayne Couzens, the police firearms officer who falsely arrested, kidnapped, raped and murdered Sarah Everard, has been sentenced to a whole life order. Tom Little QC, prosecuting, had sought the order, which means Couzens, 48, will be ineligible for parole and will die in prison.

Scotland's vaccine certification scheme will come into effect tomorrow. It will require a person seeking entry to certain venues and settings to show that they have been fully vaccinated. Fully vaccinated means vaccinated with an MHRA recognised vaccine in line with the MHRA recommended number of do

Shoosmiths has announced that three partners of the firm have been appointed to managerial roles within its operations. Janette Speed, real estate partner and previously head of Edinburgh has been officially named head of Scotland for Shoosmiths. She will assume overarching responsibility to spearhe

Businesses emerging from the Covid-induced cocoon of furlough payments used to retain their workforce since the pandemic struck are now facing the cold wind of scrutiny as HMRC gears up to claw back any cash that may have been handed over in error, writes Christine Rolland, forensic accounting