NEWS

The Lord President strongly welcomes the Faculty’s willingness to conduct a public consultation and ensure that its new rules will hold its members to the highest standards of behaviour. The Lord President considers that a public consultation aligns with the regulatory objectives set out in the Legal Services (Scotland) Act 2010 to protect and promote the interests of consumers and will ensure that the views of consumers, advocates and anyone else who wishes to respond to the consultation are taken into account before the draft rules are finalised.

The Court of Session has responsibility for regulating the professional practice, conduct and discipline of advocates. That responsibility is delegated to the Faculty of Advocates, most recently by the Act of Sederunt (Regulation of Advocates) 2011. The Faculty of Advocates makes rules to regulate these matters, which are subject to the Lord President’s approval.

In October 2023, February 2024 and the start of June 2024, the former Lord President, the Rt Hon Lord Carloway recommended that a number of changes should be made to draft rules shared with him by the Faculty of Advocates. These included: to consider lowering the standard of proof that has to be met in disciplinary cases for advocates from ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ to ‘on the balance of probabilities’; to carry out a review of the sanctions currently contained in the rules (“sanctions review”), and to prepare sanctions guidance for those taking decisions on disciplinary matters. Separately, in December 2023 and at the end of June 2024, the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission gave the Faculty a number of recommendations as to how it should improve its rules.

Between July 2024 and June 2025, the Faculty of Advocates redrafted its rules to take account of the recommendations which it had been given. Upon receiving a further draft of the rules in June 2025, the Lord President, the Rt Hon Lord Pentland, commissioned a working group of senior judges to consider the detail of the draft rules. The Lord President sent interim comments on the rules to the Dean of Faculty in November 2025. The Lord President agrees with his predecessor that it is important that the Faculty reviews the sanctions in its rules, to ensure that they remain proportionate and broadly equivalent to other disciplinary sanctions across other jurisdictions and other professions. The Lord President welcomes that the Faculty has now completed a review of the sanctions in its rules and is consulting on proposed adjusted sanctions.

The Lord President encourages anyone with an interest in the Faculty’s complaints process to respond to the consultation.

The consultation can be found on the Faculty of Advocates website