I have retired from Gillespie MacAndrew LLP, and am going to teach a new Honours course for Edinburgh Law School, “Commercial Use of Rural Land”, ( part time and along with Mike Yellowlees and Michael Upton, Advocate). In the 21st century, as part of Land Reform, society is needng rural Scotland to deliver many more and different things, as compared with farms, trees and tourism in the past. We need, along with the traditional uses, to integrate hydro, wind, wildlife, solar, biological net gain, carbon sequestration and who knows what next. The Law needs to facilitate all this. ‘Old-style’ commercial law is used to offices shops and factories, and can “forget to bring its wellies” in the rural business world. This course will show the way for the coming legal generation who will have to make this work.

I'm one of the few Partners in the Land and Rural Business team."Land and Rural Business"​, or 'LRB'​ , is a good description of this sector ( which I adopted back in 2008), where lawyers serve rural clients over the whole spectrum of law; land law, tax, agriculture, farm tenancies- a notoriously complex area-, environmental issues, sporting rights, crofting, forestry, and all the associated ancillary work. We aim to provide advice '​in the round'​, which is particularly important given the increasing focus of public policy on land use in general.I've also recently [2015] written Part IV on agricultural and sporting leases in the new Scottish Universities Law Institute textbook on the law of Leases. This began when I was asked to step in for a previous contributor who had bowed out in late 2013. It has been an interesting exercise doing it, and in particular, having to read over the general law on leases produced a number of new insights, which I have tried to explain in my text. It has also been very interesting working with the Professors who were the other authors!

I was a partner specialising in Land and Rural Business Law, and developed that sector of the practice to be recognised in the professional directories as one of the best in Scotland.