FLAMBOYANT defence lawyer Donald Findlay who is due to represent ex-Rangers owner Craig Whyte in a fraud trial has been named as Scotland's highest legal aid-earning advocates.
He received payments from the public purse totalling £288,000 last year, an 11 per cent rise from the year before, according to figures from the Scottish Legal Aid Board (SLAB).
It was announced in July that Mr Findlay, the 65-year-old former Rangers vice-chairman and now chairman of Cowdenbeath FC was to defend Mr Whyte for the forthcoming trial over his alleged fraudulent takeover of the Ibrox club.
The marathon three-month trial at the High Court in Glasgow is pencilled in to start next April.
One of Mr Findlay's major cases during the year was in representing Paul Sands, one of three men who planned to murder former UDA Johnny 'Mad Dog' Adair and were jailed for a total of 38 years. Sands, 32, was locked up for 10 years and was to be monitored for three years when he was freed.
Second on the legal aid high earners list was Anthony Lenehan, who took £278,000 in 2015/16 - a rise of 15 per cent on the previous year. The previous year Mr Lenehan rose from 14th on the list to fifth with a 44 per cent increase in his fees to £241,900 this year.
Mhairi Richards QC saw the highest rise in legal aid payments in the top ten with £274,000 in payouts, up 63 per cent on the previous year.
Last year's highest earner, former prosecutor Brian McConnachie QC, slipped to fourth, with a 15 per cent drop in fees to £256,000.
Iain Paterson of Paterson Bell solicitors was named as the highest-earning solicitor advocate for a fourth successive year, despite a 27 per cent drop in fees to £195,000.
Law firm Livingstone Browne Solicitors remained the top-earning firm, a position it has held since at least 2012, with publicly-funded earnings of £1.693 million, 13 per cent less than the previous year.
SLAB said the total cost to the taxpayer of legal assistance in Scotland was £137.8 million in 2015-16, £800,000 less than the previous year.
There were 221,745 grants of legal assistance, of which 127,018 were for criminal cases, 80,963 were civil actions, 11,985 were children's cases and 1,779 were contempt of court actions The report says that since the capping of SLAB's administrative budget in 2007/08, staff numbers have dropped by 15 percent.
The board says that this has "inevitably" meant that cost pressures have had to be met "through efficiency gains" but warned that "workloads, functions and additional responsibilities given to the organisations by the Scottish Government have impacted across our resource base".
It added: "Living within these budgets has been, and will continue to be extremely challenging."
SLAB's admin budget spending in the year fell by £200,000 to £12.2 million.
Colin Lancaster, who took up the post of SLAB chief executive in September, 2015, said he was aiming for "organisational change and a sustainable legal aid for the future" and said one of his top priorities was to review SLAB's purpose and its strategic objectives.
"I believe that any change in leadership brings an opportunity to look at things afresh. In my case, I will be considering how SLAB can continuously improve as an organisation while continuing to deliver an efficient and high quality legal aid system and providing sound, evidence based advice to ministers on how to further develop the system to ensure it meets the needs of the people of Scotland."
He added: "SLAB has a strong track record of effectively administering the legal aid system and delivering an increasing range of priorities for Scottish ministers.
“Through our effective consideration of legal aid applications and accounts, we have delivered our key function of managing the legal aid system.
“My focus to date has been, and will continue to be, SLAB’s development as an effective and responsive organisation that continually improves its delivery of an efficient and high quality legal aid system...."
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