Anderson Strathern top firm in Scottish Legal Awards
The best performing individuals, teams and firms in the Scottish legal profession were revealed at the national awards celebration for lawyers held as a live digital broadcast on 4th November.
Over 250 guests watched online to celebrate with colleagues at the 17th annual Scottish Legal Awards after the live event was cancelled due to the pandemic. The announcements followed a record high volume of entries in the awards near two-decade history.
Anderson Strathern was named Firm of the Year at the 2020 Scottish Legal Awards, announced during a virtual ceremony last night.
The firm was chosen ahead of six other finalists after the judging panel praised the firm’s continued success and impressive results.
Balfour+Manson also performed strongly, collecting two awards for Litigation Team of the Year and also Chairman of the Year, presented to Elaine Motion after her longserving leadership of the firm and recently advising on a number of high profile instructions in constitutional law cases.
18 awards were presented on the night to individuals and teams. Lawyer of the Year was presented to Iain Smith of Keegan Smith, while Shepherd & Wedderburn's Leigh Herd collected the award for Rising Star of the Year. The firm was also commended in the Support Team of the Year category.
Aegon Asset Management (formerly Kames Capital) won the award for In-house Team of the Year, MacRoberts collected the awards for both Corporate and Commercial Team of the Year and Family Law Team of the Year, TLT took the Real Estate Team Award, Neilson the Residential Property Team Award, and Moir & Sweeney Litigation the Criminal Defence Firm of the Year.
The most competitive award of the night with eight finalists was for the Community Contribution Award, shared by Digby Brown and the University of Strathclyde Mediation Clinic, with CMS also collecting a commendation in the category.
The Lifetime Achievement Award, sponsored by The Times, was presented to Ian Forrester QC, the former Judge of the General Court of the European Union whose tenure came to an end due to Brexit in January. The Glasgow University educated QC had presided over a wide variety of cases including child abduction, food safety, trademarks, fishing, and police cooperation.
The independent programme is presided over by a large expert judging panel, chaired by Shonaig Macpherson. She commented: "It’s testament to the high regard in which these awards are held, that again this year there has been a record-breaking number of entries. Thank you to all the finalists for their forbearance and understanding as we present these awards after a necessary delay in the schedule this year.
"Congratulations to all the winners and thank you to our sponsors whose continuous support in this new digital format has been very much welcomed."
The awards also raise funds for two charities, It’s Good 2 Give and LawScot Foundation.
Click here for the full list of winners and finalists.