Joanna Cherry KC
Joanna Cherry KC called to the bar in 1995 and took silk in 2009. Joanna has established herself as a formidable presence in the legal world and has experience in human rights, public law, constitutional matters, criminal, medical-legal matters and in fatal accident inquiries. Her extensive experience includes serving as a standing Junior to the Scottish Government and as an advocate depute. Prior to her political career, she built a successful appellate practice, regularly appearing before the UK Supreme Court and handling complex medical-legal cases and fatal accident inquiries.
Joanna served as the Member of Parliament for Edinburgh South-West from 2015 to 2024. During that time, she was the front bench spokesperson for her party on justice and home affairs from 2015 to 2021. Thereafter she chaired parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights.
Her parliamentary tenure was marked by significant legal achievements, including her involvement in high-profile constitutional litigation that took her to both the European Court of Justice and the UK Supreme Court. She led the Scottish litigation that resulted in Boris Johnson’s prorogation of Parliament being ruled unlawful.
Joanna’s work has been widely recognised. She was awarded the Herald’s “Best Scot at Westminster” in 2019 and Holyrood magazine’s equivalent award in 2021. She is also an Honorary Bencher of the Middle Temple.
Prior to entering politics, the Legal 500 had recognised Joanna as a leading silk in the criminal field, and in personal injury, medical negligence and professional negligence, where she was described as “fearless in her pursuit of a satisfactory outcome for the client.”
Joanna has returned to full-time practice and is available for instruction.
Selected cases:
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Julian Ghosh KC
Julian Ghosh KC is a highly respected and accomplished advocate and barrister, renowned for his exceptional intellect, vast knowledge, and commanding presence in court. He has risen to the top of his field in multiple areas of law, which include corporate work and European taxation issues. Additionally, Julian specialises in Judicial Review and Administrative Law and is co-authoring the upcoming edition of Wade & Forsyth, a seminal textbook on Judicial Review. He also teaches Administrative Law at the University of Cambridge.
Julian is King’s Counsel at the Scottish Bar and Bar of England and Wales and is also called to the Bar of Ireland. He is a part-time Judge of the First-Tier and Deputy Judge of the Upper-Tier Tax Tribunals. Julian holds several prestigious academic positions, including Senior Fellow at the International Tax Centre, Leiden; Bye-fellow at Peterhouse, Cambridge; and Visiting Professor at King’s College London, where he teaches the Law of Personal Taxation.
In recognition of his outstanding contributions to the field, Julian was awarded the title of Tax Silk of the Year at the 2021 UK Chambers Bar Awards.
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Ian S. Forrester KC LLD
Ian Forrester KC is a renowned practitioner in the field of European law, specialising in competition, intellectual property, customs, antidumping, pharmaceutical regulation, football, the precautionary principle, broadcasting, computer software and due process. He was educated and trained in Scotland, Louisiana, New York and Brussels and has been a member of the bars of Scotland, New York, England and Brussels.
Mr Forrester returned to practice at the Scots Bar in 2021. From 2015 until 2020 he was the judge from the UK on the General Court of the European Union hearing about 200 cases concerning competition, access to documents, trademarks, plant varieties, public procurement, employment, and other European Union questions. His mandate came to an end with Brexit.
He has been an arbitrator, counsel, and expert Arbitral proceedings under the auspices of the International Chamber of Commerce, International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes, Court of Arbitration for Sport and has argued cases before courts in Scotland, England, Belgium, Serbia and France, as well as the EFTA court, the ECtHR in Strasbourg, and the EU courts in Luxembourg. He has acted for a number of important entities, including BBC, Canon, DuPont, European Commission, Fujitsu, Intel, Liberal Democrat Party, Microsoft, Scottish Football Association, Toyota, UEFA, as well as a number of indigent prisoners.
He has extensive experience in arbitration or mediation matters, either as advocate for a party, or as expert witness on European law, or as arbitrator/ mediator, from 1983 to 2014, and since his departure from the General Court of the European Union in 2021. The arbitrations have mostly been conducted under the auspices of the ICC in Paris, or the CAS in Lausanne; and once before the ICSID in Washington. The ICC cases involved disputes about investment contracts, trade secrets, hotel construction, stolen technology, and a variety of other commercial conflicts. The CAS matters involved player transfers, treatment of injured players, broadcasting rights and the conduct of elections to governing bodies.
His leading competition cases include Magill (compulsory copyright licensing); Bosman (football transfers); Microsoft (computer servers); IMS (compulsory licensing); GlaxoSmithKline (parallel trade in pharmaceuticals); Les Laboratoires Servier (settlement of patent disputes); Chalkor/Halcor (due process and judicial review).
European Court of Human Rights cases concerned forcing a citizen to speak on pain of punishment even if the answer itself reveals punishable conduct (Al Fayed and Harrods: Fayed v The United Kingdom); press sources (Hans Martin Tillack v Belgium); prisoner’s rights (Kalashnikov v Russia); fair trial and right to property (Karic and Djordjevic v Serbia). He helped to achieve the liberation of Louis Henry Burns, an indigent prisoner, on appeal to the Second Circuit Court of Appeal from a conviction based upon a coerced confession.
During his practice he has been a consistently top ranked counsel by the leading Legal Directories in the UK and European editions of the guides. In the 2023 Chambers and Partners UK Bar Guide he is Band 1 ranked in Public Law matters. Chambers say: “Ian Forrester KC’s return to private practice is a highly significant development for the Scottish Bar. Until 2020 he sat for the UK on the bench of the General Court of the European Union. To the Faculty of Advocates he brings immense experience of legal practice in a host of areas including competition and international trade law.”
Further detail about his practice, visit: ianstewartforrester.com.
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Usman Tariq KC
Usman Tariq has extensive experience of high-value and complex commercial disputes and public law litigation. His core areas of practice include contractual, intellectual property, insolvency, banking, company and professional negligence disputes. He also specialises in administrative and public law, including judicial reviews, and has experience of advising clients on sanctions law. He has appeared at all levels of the Scottish court system, including the UK Supreme Court.
The breadth of his experience and expertise is recognised in the Chambers & Partners UK Bar Guide 2025 in which he is ranked as a leading individual in eight practice areas. This is the highest number of individual rankings for the Scottish Bar. He was recognised as Advocate of the Year at the Law Awards of Scotland 2017 and the Legal 500’s Junior Counsel of the Year at the Scottish Bar at the Legal 500 UK Awards 2019.
He has held a number of professional appointments. Since 2022, he is appointed as counsel to the UK Covid-19 Public Inquiry chaired by Baroness Heather Hallett. He is a member of the legal team investigating core political and administrative governance and decision-making in relation to the pandemic. He was involved in high-profile public hearings in January 2024 in which key individuals involved in the pandemic response in Scotland gave evidence. He has gained significant experience of acting in public inquiries. He was also a Standing Junior counsel to the UK Government in Scotland for nine years and latterly served as Second Standing Junior to the Advocate General for Scotland before his appointment as silk. He has served as a full-time Advocate Depute at the Crown Office between 2021 and 2022.
He has been described in the Chambers & Partners UK Bar Guide as being “universally respected at the Bar, including by opponents and the judiciary” and a “very highly regarded practitioner” who has “the ear of the court” and is “very popular with the judiciary”. He is ranked in the Chambers & Partners UK Bar Guide 2025 for the following eight practice areas: (i) commercial dispute resolution; (ii) intellectual property; (iii) information technology; (iv) media law; (v) restructuring / insolvency; (vi) professional negligence; (vii) administrative and public law; and (viii) civil liberties and human rights. He is also ranked in the Legal 500’s UK Bar Guide 2024 for commercial disputes and administrative and public law.
He acts in cases across the commercial spectrum. He is ranked in the Chambers & Partners UK Bar Guide 2025 and in the Legal 500 UK Bar Guide 2024 for commercial disputes. He is described in the Chambers & Partners Bar Guide 2024 as “an absolute standout advocate, a superb all-rounder who is great with clients” and whose “legal analysis is outstanding”. His expertise in professional negligence claims is recognised by Chambers & Partners who note that he has a “reputation for his handling of professional negligence claims, primarily against firms of solicitors”. He also undertakes a significant amount of work in the field of personal and corporate insolvency. Chambers & Partners note that “he is regularly instructed to act for administrators, liquidators and trustees, among other parties, in complex corporate and personal insolvency cases”.
He has developed a market-leading reputation for intellectual property disputes. He has been described by the Legal 500 as “The best all-round IP junior in Scotland”. Chambers & Partners has noted that he is a “real standout in IP” and “well deserving of his reputation as a go-to IP barrister”. In addition to appearing in most of the leading IP cases in the Court of Session over the past decade, he has experience of conducting proceedings in the UK Intellectual Property Office. He also has a leading reputation for Information Technology disputes. He is the only junior counsel in Scotland recognised by Chambers & Partners for expertise in this practice area. Chambers & Partners note that he “garners critical acclaim in the market for his abilities in a host of cases including those involving the IP rights in games, television and related merchandise”. He has acted in high-profile cases in the gaming industry, including for Sony Interactive Entertainment and Naughty Dog in relation to the hack of servers and leak of footage from the “Last of Us Part II” video game before its release, and Rockstar Games in relation to modding of the software of the “Grand Theft Auto V” video game.
He has significant expertise in administrative and public law as well as civil liberties and human rights. He is ranked in both the Chambers & Partners and Legal 500 UK Bar directories for administrative and public law. In his role as a Standing Junior counsel to the UK Government in Scotland, he has advised and represented a number of UK government departments including the Cabinet Office, Home Office, Department of Work and Pensions, Department of Energy Security and Net Zero and the Ministry of Defence. He is described by Chambers & Partners as having a “busy public and administrative law practice, in which he acts mostly for central government”. He is also described as a “well-regarded civil liberties and human rights advocate” who is “particularly adept at judicial reviews concerning EU, human rights and immigration law”. He has significant experience of EU law, including having advised on the applicability of the sanctions regime.
He has experience of alternative dispute resolution as counsel in mediations and arbitrations. He has been appointed as the arbitrator in commercial disputes. He has also been a legal member of the Scottish Football Association’s Judicial Panel.
He is an alumnus of the U.S. Department of State’s International Visitors Leadership Program (IVLP). The IVLP is the U.S. Department of State’s premier professional exchange programme in which emerging foreign leaders in a variety of fields are invited to the U.S. to meet with professional counterparts and cultivate lasting relationships. In 2022, he spent time in Washington D.C., San Francisco, Portland and Montana meeting with various federal and state governmental bodies, NGOs and stakeholders in a human rights project on Advancing Minority Rights in Europe.
He is a member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Young Academy of Scotland (YAS). YAS aims to bring together young professionals from all sectors to work together on projects that benefit Scotland and the world.
He is passionate about improving inclusion in the legal profession in Scotland. In 2017, he co-founded the Scottish Ethnic Minority Lawyers Association (SEMLA). SEMLA aims to improve ethnic diversity in the legal profession in Scotland. The group is supported by the Law Society of Scotland and the Faculty of Advocates. SEMLA has collaborated with some of the largest law firms and organisations across the UK on events and work placements for law students from ethnic minority backgrounds. In 2021, he was appointed to the Law Society of Scotland’s Racial Inclusion Group which undertook a systematic review of racial inclusion in the profession and produced a report with recommendations. In 2023, he was appointed to the Scottish Government’s Future of the Legal Profession short-life working group. The purpose of this group is to examine the evidence and propose improvements to address the challenges of recruitment and retention in the profession and to provide support for the planning, collaboration and improvement of legal services in Scotland.
He called to the Bar as the Faculty’s Lord Reid scholar for 2010/2011. This scholarship is awarded annually to the outstanding candidate to the Bar. He is a graduate of the University of Glasgow and the University of Cambridge.
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Una Doherty KC
Una Doherty KC has been ranked in many editions of the Legal 500 UK Bar Directory for Personal Injury and Medical Negligence. At the Legal 500 Scotland Awards 2024 held in November 2024 she was named Silk of the Year.
- 2025 edition (Band 1 ranking): “Una is one of Scotland’s most experienced and specialised counsel in the field of medical law. Nothing fazes her. She is calm and collected as well as extraordinarily thorough. She will not shy away from running complex arguments, and has an ability to unpick and clearly present complicated evidence.”
- 2024 edition: “Una is acutely intelligent with a meticulous and analytical approach. Her negotiation skills are excellent, and her legal analysis second to none.”
- 2023 edition: “Una is incredibly calm and instils confidence She is determined and dependable, and has the ability to cut straight through the superfluous and immediately identify the issues at the heart of an action.”
- 2021 edition: “Una has an incredible eye for detail and getting into the minutiae of a case. She runs consultations, negotiations and court hearings very well, making her a go-to senior counsel.”
- 2019 edition: “Extremely reliable, quick-witted and efficient.”
- 2018 edition: “A high calibre advocate.”
- 2017 edition: “Reliable and well organised.”
- 2016 edition: “An impressive ability to assimilate a lot of technical information very quickly.”
- 2015 edition: “Great attention to detail and particular strengths in high-value medical negligence claims.”
She has also been ranked for clinical negligence in many editions of Chambers UK Bar Guide.
- 2025 edition (Band 1 ranking): “Una has experience of the most complex and difficult cases, and in spite of her understated demeanour she will not back away from the challenge of running a difficult case or argument.” “Una Doherty is very conscientious, responsive and has huge attention to detail. In court she is very confident and she has a wealth of experience.”
- 2024 edition (Band 1 ranking): “Una is very skilled in technical cases. She is robust during consultations and also good with clients.” “Una’s great strength is the ability to deal with details of complex cases, but with a sufficient degree of passion.” “The speed with which she got on top of the detail was really impressive. She has the capacity to simplify complex legal and factual issues. She is a really good litigator who has done several trials for the office.”
- 2023 edition: “Una works with impressive detail, knowledge, diligence and insight.” “She deals with difficult situations with ease.” “Her written work is always clear and concise.” “She has a very good eye for detail.”
- 2022 edition: “She is meticulous in her preparation and attention to detail. She turns around work extremely efficiently.” “She is extremely thorough and diligent.”
- 2021 edition: “She is always extremely well prepared and is very thorough. She’s pragmatic and always puts the clients first.” “She is very meticulous, approachable and practical.”
- 2020 edition: “She is a thoughtful and diligent advocate.” “Her attention to detail is second to none. She’s also great with clients and is quick to spot issues.”
- 2019 edition, ranked as a new silk: “Very knowledgeable and very thorough.”
- 2018 edition: “She grasps legal concepts very well, is very tenacious in court, gives very clear advice and is hands-on.” “She has a very broad grasp of how things work on both the defendant and claimant side and is very effective in reaching sensible settlements.”
- 2017 edition: “Very able and efficient. She’s insightful and good at analysing cases.” “She’s always very well prepared.”
Una has also been ranked as a Leading Silk in Crime and Regulatory in the 2025 edition of the Legal 500 UK Bar Directory.
- 2025 edition: ‘Her advocacy style is understated yet powerful due to her thoroughness and cogent reasoning.’
She has also been ranked as a Leading Silk in Administrative and Public Law in the 2024 edition of the Legal 500 Bar Directory.
Una has a varied civil practice which covers a range of reparation disputes, although her main areas of practice are in personal injury and clinical negligence claims. She is instructed both for pursuers and for defenders and acts for clients ranging from individual litigants to insurers and public bodies. She is regularly instructed by the NHS Central Legal Office. She has extensive experience of high value personal injury claims including those involving catastrophic brain injuries. In the area of clinical negligence, she regularly acts in multi-million pound claims, including cerebral palsy cases. She is currently instructed in the UK and Scottish Covid-19 Inquiries, and the Scottish Hospitals Inquiry, representing NHS National Services Scotland. In 2023, Una was leading counsel for the respondent, and presented the oral submissions in the Supreme Court, in McCulloch and others (Appellants) v Forth Valley Health Board (Respondent) [2023] UKSC 26. During the hearing, the Court described this as the most important clinical negligence appeal in years. The Court refused the appeal.
She was an Ad Hoc Advocate Depute from 2013 to 2023, and in that role prosecuted criminal cases in the High Court.
She was a Legal Assessor to the General Teaching Council of Scotland from 2017 to 2021, advising panels on questions of law and procedure in Fitness to Teach proceedings.
In 2017, she completed an International Arbitration Law course, and was a member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators from 2017 to 2021.
Una took silk in 2018.
In 2020, Una qualified as a mediator.
In 2021, Una was appointed as a Legally Qualified Chair by the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC). In that role Una chairs panels with social service and lay members to decide whether workers’ fitness to practise is impaired.
Recent selected cases:
Confidentiality prohibits the details of the numerous claims which have settled without recourse to the courts or in the course of proof.
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Robert Howie KC
Robert Howie KC was admitted as an advocate in 1986. He took silk in 2000. He has been involved in a large number of adjudications as Counsel, legal adviser or adjudicator. He has also acted as the Court’s reporter in several petition cases including Earl of Balfour, Petitioner 2003 SC (HL) 1 and Chisholm, Petitioner 2006 SLT 394. He regularly appears in the Inner and Outer Houses of the Court of Session. He has appeared in the Sheriff Court, the Lands Tribunal and in several Arbitrations. Robert Howie has also led in the House of Lords and the UK Supreme Court.
Robert Howie KC is ranked in the current edition of Chambers and Partners under 4 areas of practice. In Construction Law he is described as “A really great lawyer who is deserving of his great reputation and an opponent to be reckoned with… He is very good at marshalling and dealing with legal arguments.” He is also ranked in Chambers and Partners for Insolvency described as being “very commercially and tactically minded… His advice is always first-class, clear, well thought out and supported by detailed knowledge of case law.” Under Commercial Dispute Resolution “His thoroughness and knowledge are second to none… He is one of the cleverest advocates at the Scottish Bar. He’s near the top of the pile in terms of quality commercial work.” And under Professional Negligence “He has an amazing ability to come up with a left-field argument… He is very bright, very able and an inventive thinker.”
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