2019 Scottish legal award winner blogs Rising star provides valuable insight through case experiences

Jamie Apted, winner of the Rising Star Award at the Scottish Legal Awards 2019 tells us how his positive contributions to the profession helped him win prestigious award.

I feel very honoured to have won the Rising Star at the Scottish Legal Awards 2019.

My area of expertise is commercial litigation; specifically banking, financial, complex contractual and insolvency disputes. I was very lucky to be asked to speak at the Law Society of Scotland’s Commercial Contracts Conference in which I delivered a session on the then rapidly evolving case law surrounding assignations and was subsequently asked by MBL Seminars to deliver CPD training on the same subject.

Alongside my commercial work, I assisted the Scottish Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux on a large-scale consumer credit and protection issue with respect to the renewable energy sector. Over the last decade, thousands of homeowners throughout Scotland have been defrauded by Green Deal Solar Panel Scheme providers who professed to be backed by the government and who purported to provide free solar panels to homeowners to save them money on their energy bills. The solar panels were not free, and these providers were not backed by the government. They, unfortunately, targeted elderly and vulnerable homeowners ultimately signing them up to credit schemes that they didn’t know they were entering into.

This has left thousands of people throughout Scotland struggling to pay their energy bills or sell their properties. I provided advice to Citizens Advice Scotland on how their customers could seek redress and addressed the Cross-party parliamentary Group on consumer protection for home energy efficiency and renewable energy on this issue. I am currently assisting in lobbying the Secretary of State and Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy to put in place a redress scheme for affected customers and I aim to make sure that the majority of these homeowners can have their credit agreements ripped up.

I hope that I will continue to be involved with such interesting work in the future and to continue to make a positive contribution to the profession.