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Increased demand for guidance on boardroom governance has seen financial services adviser Malcolm Wood drafted in to a consultancy role with Burness Paull LLP. Mr Wood recently stepped down as group company secretary of Lloyds Banking Group. Prior to that he successfully led the in-house legal and s

Blackadders has moved into a new, larger office in the Edinburgh's west end.

Axiom Advocates has been ranked as a band 1 set in 12 different practice areas with members receiving an outstanding 119 rankings in the latest Chambers UK rankings. Axiom has won high praise in the first instance for its core practice areas as “a stable distinguished by its extensive ranks of

Scotland has become the first country in the UK to ban plastic-stemmed cotton buds. Further action on plastics is already planned with Scotland’s deposit return scheme expected to capture 90 per cent of aluminium and steel cans, glass and plastic bottles once operational.

MacRoberts has helped win an £18 million investment for emerging Scottish energy company Together Energy. The deal, which has been secured from Warrington Borough Council, will see the council take a 50 per cent shareholding in the business. The council was attracted to the Glasgow-based compa

A tool that aims to make the UK’s human rights records transparent and the government accountable has been launched. HumanRightsTracker.com allows civil society organisations, academics, parliamentarians and legal professionals to learn about the UK’s human rights duties under UN treatie

The Times has published a full obituary of Roy Martin QC. "Roy Martin was the epitome of the private, self-contained advocate who was at his desk before dawn and one of the few individuals to become a Queen’s Counsel in England and Wales as well as Scotland. Yet he would transmogrify into a ha

California has introduced a ban on the sale and manufacture of new fur products, becoming the first state in the US to do so. The new law was brought into effect at the same time as legislation barring most animals from circus performances, The Guardian reports.

A man lost most of his life savings after his best friend turned an oil-fired boiler in his workshop on – unaware that €540,000 was stashed inside. The 49-year-old from Soest, near Dortmund in Germany, had kept the cash in the boiler because it was no longer used.

A father-of-two who claimed that his estranged wife had “wrongfully removed” their two children from Italy when she fled with them to Scotland following the breakdown of their “volatile” marriage has had an appeal to have them returned refused. A judge had ruled that while th

The practice in Scotland of delaying detainees' access to a lawyer has been condemned for the second time by a Council of Europe committee, which has called for legislation to be amended to secure this right – seven years after it did so the first time. Detained persons are entitled to have a

The implications of Brexit for asylum policy and for vulnerable refugees and asylum seekers in Europe have been highlighted in a new Lords committee report. The most significant implication of UK withdrawal from the EU’s Dublin System – which determines responsibility for asylum applicat

A consultation has been launched on the maximum penalties for the most serious animal welfare and wildlife offences. Holyrood’s Environment, Climate Change & Land Reform Committee is considering proposals to provide further protections to animals and wildlife in Scotland.

New powers of entry and search for police to apprehend a person unlawfully at large from a home detention curfew (HDC) have come into force. A new offence of remaining unlawfully at large has also been introduced through the Management of Offenders (Scotland) Act 2019, which was passed by the S

A solicitor who had sex with a drunk junior colleague, which a tribunal found he did not initiate, has been fined £35,000 and ordered to pay £200,000 in costs amid calls his case be referred to the police. Ryan Beckwith, 41, a partner at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, brought the profes