AN out-of-hours phone line for lawyers that was launched on Monday has been closed after allegations of "insider trading".
The line was aimed at letting solicitors delegate the tide of unpredictable work stemming from a recent Supreme Court decision that means clients need 24-hour access to lawyers.
However, after complaints from the Glasgow Bar Association, the service's directors yesterday announced their resignation.
A letter sent to the president of the Law Society from Glasgow Bar Association president Bernadette Baxter raised questions about whether the business was appropriate, and asked if it had benefited from information gathered by its directors while on the Society's legal aid negotiating team.
The directors said the venture "was offered no special assistance or advice".
The new initiative followed the controversial ruling by the UK Supreme Court last year that the Scots practice of holding suspects for six hours without access to a lawyer breached the European Convention on Human Rights.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article