News

Shepherd and Wedderburn has been appointed to all six lots of the new Scottish Government Legal Services Framework following a competitive tender process. The four-year framework will be open to Scottish government public sector organisations, and is effective from 1 August 2019.

The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) should extend its victim strategy to complainers of sexual crimes that are prosecuted in the sheriff solemn courts, a review has found.

Stuart Clubb highlights the significance of a recent decision of the Inner House of the Court of Session regarding the insolvency of Scottish companies carrying out business in India. Against the backdrop of the insolvency of Scottish companies carrying on business in India, a recent decision of the

The Scottish Human Rights Commission (SHRC) has been granted leave to intervene in the continuing legal challenge to the “serious human rights implications” of Serco's lock-change policy. The private accommodation provider began its mass eviction policy of up to 300 people in Glasgo

Addleshaw Goddard has reported record financial results for the year 2018-19. Global turnover at the international firm, which employs more than 200 staff in Scotland, was £275.4 million, a year-on-year rise of 14 per cent, while total profit exceeded £100m, up 16 per cent on the previou

The Scottish Parliament’s Justice Committee is seeking information on the Scottish government’s spending in relation to prisons and alternatives to custody, as part of its wider review of budgets in the justice portfolio. It is gathering this information before it considers the governmen

Sampling without authorisation can infringe a phonogram producer’s rights, though the use of a sound sample taken from a phonogram in a modified form unrecognisable to the ear does not infringe those rights, even without such authorisation, the Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled

Liberty has lost a High Court challenge against the UK's surveillance laws, saying that the ruling allowed the government “to spy on every one of us”. The rights group had challenged parts of the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 (IPA), known to its critics as the "snoopers' charter", a

A man who was jailed at the age of 14 for encouraging another to murder Australian police officers has been granted anonymity for life. Judges in the High Court of England and Wales ruled that he would suffer "serious harm" if he were publicly named.

The standard of proof applying to solicitors subject to misconduct proceedings has been lowered from "beyond all reasonable doubt" to a "balance of probabilities" following approval from the regulator. The Legal Services Board supported an application from the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT)

A council tenant has been evicted and ordered to pay more than £100,000 for illegally subletting his council flat in London as a holiday home through Airbnb. Westminster City Council took legal action against Toby Harman, 37, after it was found that the property on Vauxhall Bridge Road had bee

A court in Peru has issued a written judgment in a language of the Quechua family, the main language group of the Inca Empire, for the first time. The ruling was handed down in a personal injury claim between two native speakers of Áncash Quechua, estimated to have around a million speakers i

A Scottish farming business is entitled to repayment of VAT paid in purchasing entitlements to an EU farm subsidy, the UK Supreme Court has ruled. The justices unanimously dismissed an appeal HMRC after ruling that when the respondent incurred the costs of the single farm pa

A sheriff principal has found entirely in favour of the Standards Commission for Scotland, the first ever substantive appeal against one of its decisions, in a case providing that when acting in a quasi-judicial capacity the enhanced protection afforded politicians to make political comment, under t

The impact of savage cuts in civil legal aid since 2012 has been so devastating that the UK’s most senior judge yesterday felt it necessary to broadcast an appeal for a legal charity. “I know how intimidating the civil and family courts can be for people without legal knowledge of help,&