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13 November, 2025

Ian Forrester KC receives lifetime achievement award at the Herald’s Law Awards of Scotland

One of Scotland’s most distinguished advocates, Ampersand’s Ian Forrester KC, received a Lifetime Achievement Award from The Herald Law Awards of Scotland 2025. His award was just one of many that were handed over during a glittering ceremony hosted by Rob Rinder, which took place in the Radisson Blu Hotel in Glasgow on Friday, 7 November.

Ian S Forrester KC LLD, who served as judge from the UK in the General Court of the European Union before returning to the Scottish Bar in 2020, received the accolade for his extensive experience in the European Court of Human Rights and for his record in arbitration and mediation over many decades.

Ampersand’s Usman Tariq KC presented Ian with the award. Usman said:

Unfortunately, I come not bearing gifts but only warm and admiring words for one of the most remarkable Scottish lawyers of this generation.

It is a real privilege and honour to present this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award to an individual who has had an extraordinary legal career, one that began in this great city.He was born in Glasgow in 1945 and educated at Kelvinside Academy and the University of Glasgow. He began his career with Maclay Murray & Spens in the mid-1960s. An opportunity to study at Tulane University in Louisiana took him to the United States, where he spent a couple of years working in New York for Davis Polk.

One of the memorable cases that he worked on in New York involved a Pan Am airplane that was hijacked by Palestinians, flown from Amsterdam to London then on to Beirut and ultimately blown up in Cairo. It was a dispute between two insurance companies. He spent months in Beirut, Damascus and Istanbul working on this case.He returned to Scotland and called to the Scottish Bar in 1972 as the “devil” of Sir David Edward KC, the recipient of last year’s Lifetime Achievement Award. The Bar had been in his sights since his days at the Glasgow University Union, when he debated the likes of Donald Dewar, John Smith, Colin MacKay and James Douglas-Hamilton.

He took silk, becoming a Queen’s Counsel in 1988. In the meantime, he was admitted to the New York and English Bars. However, despite calling to the Scottish Bar in 1972, it took him a full 50 years before he started practising there.

In 1973, he instead headed to Brussels to work for another top-tier law firm doing customs law, chemicals and competition law. He was one of the first generation of UK lawyers who arrived in Brussels when the UK joined the European Communities.

For the next 42 years, Brussels was his home. He set up his own firm in Brussels in 1981 which was ultimately bought over by White & Case in 1997.  While at White & Case, he set up a global pro-bono programme for the firm.

One of the important pro-bono cases handled by the firm under his watch was the challenge to the US military’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy, which served in practice to prolong the discrimination that gay people had been subjected to in the military.

During his career, he was involved in many of the seminal cases which contributed to the development of key principles of EU law, and in particular competition law, including Bosman, Magill, Microsoft, Intel and Rambus.

He resigned from White and Case in 2015 as he was nominated by the UK to serve on the General Court of the European Union in Luxembourg.  He followed fellow Scots, Lord Mackenzie Stuart and Sir David Edward, on to the Bench in Luxembourg.

That judicial position ended with Brexit with his tenure coming to an end in 2021. He was the UK’s last ever judge of the EU court. The UK’s loss was the Scottish Bar’s gain. After 50 years, he returned to practice at the Scottish Bar. He is now a practising member of Ampersand Advocates. It has been, in his words, “quite a journey”.

I have had the privilege of working with this remarkable man since his return to Edinburgh. He is a brilliant lawyer but an even better person – a man who is generous, modest and the best of company. Working with him has been a genuine highlight for me. He has been a mentor to many young lawyers around the world, including me.

This Award is not simply a recognition of years of service, but of a lifetime devoted to the law in a career which has spanned practice; scholarship; and judicial office. He is a true global Scot. The Judges unanimously decided to award this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award to Ian Forrester KC

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