ONE of Scotland's best-known solicitors, Austin Lafferty, has been appointed as president of the Law Society of Scotland.
Mr Lafferty, who regularly contributes to The Herald on legal matters, took up his new role at the society's council meeting yesterday.
The lawyer runs his own multi-branch law firm in and around Glasgow and is also a well-known figure on television and radio.
Mr Lafferty said: "It is a great honour to be able to represent and lead a great profession.
"Solicitors play a key role in communities across Scotland. They provide a range of essential services such as helping with buying and selling a property or making a will and can often provide a lifeline when someone is in the greatest need of help and advice.
"The society, just like the wider legal profession, is going through a period of substantial change as it works to meet new demands and I am well aware of some of the challenges that will come to the fore during my year in office.
"It's my hope that I can bring together the diverse stands of our profession and work to ensure the contribution that solicitors make to the lives of their clients, as well as public life in Scotland, is properly recognised and valued."
His appointment came as the Law Society announced it is to cut its number of council members from 62 to 46 to "streamline the decision-making process".
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