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A total of €171.3 million in GDPR fines were issued against European countries in 2020, a new report shows. The fines were issued between January 1st, 2020, and January 1st, 2021, according to the GDPR Fines 2020 Report by Finbold.

A trustee who embezzled hundreds of thousands from a charity has been ordered to pay back £700,000 in profit. Architect Ian Brash, from Wallyford, East Lothian, admitted embezzling £358,832 from the Dr Robert Malcolm Trust between August 2010 and September 2014.

A non-binary person from El Salvador has been granted asylum in the UK in a first-of-its-kind ruling. Arthur Britney Joestar, 29, identified as a gay man when they arrived in the UK in October 2017 but came to identify as non-binary – i.e. neither a man nor a woman – after settling in Li

Drone owners must register their devices under regulations designed to protect privacy. New rules require all drones fitted with cameras to be logged with the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).

A lawyer has been imprisoned after exchanging hundreds of calls and messages with a prisoner via contraband phones smuggled into a jail. Dene McClean, 37, communicated with Jonathan Gomez on various illicit phones on more than 500 occasions, it was found.

Children, families and friends have had around 18,000 ‘virtual visits’ with prisoners in Scotland in the six months since secure online conferencing was rolled-out across the country. The introduction of virtual visits, alongside the provision of mobile telephone handsets with appropriat

A lawyer expects strong prices to continue as deals rise by half during Lindsays' busiest four months on record. The firm said Scotland’s property market remains robust after recording almost £100m-worth of sales in four months.

A former lawyer who used social media to report from Wuhan following the first outbreak of Covid-19 last February has been jailed for four years for "picking quarrels and provoking trouble". Zhang Zhan, a 37-year-old human rights activist who was also detained in 2019 for speaking in support of anti

The highest court in Japan has endorsed a ruling granting the country's longest-serving death row inmate a retrial. Iwao Hakamada, 84, has been on death row for more than 50 years after he was convicted of robbing and murdering his boss as well as the man's wife and two children.

A dozen people have been fined after breaking strict Covid-19 rules to play dominoes together in a restaurant. Police said they entered a restaurant in east London and found "a group of 12 people hiding in a dark room".

The Court of Appeal of England and Wales has rejected an appeal by nine claimants, who were injured when a man broke into the hotel they were staying in, against a High Court decision that the hotel was not responsible in law for their injuries. Ohoud Al-Najar and eight other members

In our final edition of SLN before we take a much-needed break, we detail just some of the many stories of the difficult year that was 2020. In January lawyers gathered at the Signet Library in Edinburgh to hear from Philippe Sands QC on the plight of the Chagos Islanders and Britain's refusal to al

The Dean of Faculty threatened to withdraw from the Scottish government's legal team in its defence against Alex Salmond unless they brought an end to the case, new documents show. Roddy Dunlop QC said he would not continue 11 days before the government conceded that its investigation of the former

New legislation to make sure next year’s Scottish parliamentary election can take place fairly and safely during the coronavirus pandemic has been backed by MSPs. The poll is expected to go ahead as planned on 6 May and the Scottish General Election (Coronavirus) Bill – which has passed

Changes to the law to enhance and protect the welfare of animals have been introduced. If approved, the new legislation laid before the Scottish Parliament will update existing laws covering dog breeding and pet selling as well as introduce licensing for cat and rabbit breeders, animal rescue centre