2019 Scottish legal award winner blogs Doubly Proud – Award winners twice in a row

Alastair Shepherd, partner at Coulters reflects on yet another success for the growing Edinburgh Law Firm.

In 2018, we were proud to win the “Best Residential Property Firm” at the annual Scottish Legal Awards dinner in Glasgow. The next morning, we dismissed our hangovers with bacon rolls, placed the plaque in our Edinburgh Park Boardroom, and wondered wistfully if we could retain the trophy in 2019.

We’re a very young Firm, but with strong and well-established roots. Coulters grew out of HBJ Property in May 2016, just before HBJ became Addleshaw Goddard, sensing that there was a space in the crowded Edinburgh market for a boutique firm specialising exclusively in residential and agricultural property. If our clients needed wills, powers of attorney, or indeed opinions on corporate structures, we knew the best people in Edinburgh to give that advice. It meant we could concentrate on the rapidly developing law of property and not pretend to be experts in anything else.

Despite the firm’s youth, we are happy to admit our Partners left their youth behind sometime in the 1970’s. Ross Mackay is the legendary midwife of the Combined Standard Clauses; Louise Williams is probably the most respected residential practitioner in Edinburgh; Malcolm McPherson brings his managerial skills and wise counsel; and I do my bit, especially when a property has a septic tank attached. It would be both embarrassing and a challenge to my maths skills to work out how many years combined experience we have.

We have a dedicated and committed team working from our three offices, some who were with Coulters from the very beginning, some who joined from HBJ, and some who recently joined us from Morton Fraser. One thing we all have in common is that we exist to give our clients a superb experience.

So when we won the award again in March 2019, and once again the bacon rolls nursed us back to health, we allowed ourselves a momentary self-congratulatory glow before thinking – how can we win that again in 2020?