A new organisation was made to safeguard the interests of criminal lawyers.

The Scottish Solicitors Bar Association (SSBA) made its debut Twitter this week at which it declared Julia McPartlin as president and Stuary Murray as vice president.

The SSBA tweeted:”Our intent is to reflect and promote the interests of both criminal defence professionals across Scotland. We’ve already secured a spot at routine meetings with civil servants in the justice department”

It added:”There are lots of challenges before us all. The resilience finance and the traineeship finance, the mounting backlog of cases, Covid security at the Legal Aid Payment Overview Panel are only a couple of the problems we’ll be handling.”

Membership of this SSBA is free for your first season and receptive to all lawyers and trainees in private criminal defence practice.