John has been a solicitor for 40 years and is an accredited specialist in both Child Law and Family Law.  He is the vice-convenor of the Family Law Committee of the Law Society and General Editor of the Butterworth Scottish Family Law Service.

Tony qualified in 1999 and joined Brodies in 2003 becoming a partner in 2007. Since May 2015 he has been head of the employment department. He focuses principally on financial services and the manufacturing / construction sector where he acts as a general employment law adviser to a number of businesses. He also has significant experience in supporting transactional teams with the people aspects of corporate change, ranging from mergers and acquisitions to outsourcing and insolvencies. He still finds time to appear in employment tribunals where he can. In February 2015 he was re-accredited by the Law Society of Scotland as a specialist in employment law.  He is regularly asked to speak at conferences and in 2015 he spoke at CLT’s Scots law conference as well as delivering a presentation in German on UK employment law at the annual meeting of the German Employment Lawyers Association held in Edinburgh.

Stephen Harrower is an Associate Director of Financial Planning with Tilney. He has over 27 years’ experience in the financial services industry and is one of only 2,000 UK Financial Planners to be Chartered. Chartered Financial Planners have qualified to the highest level of technical excellence. Stephen deals with a wide range of personal and corporate clients and provides a holistic and tailored personal service with a view to developing long lasting client relationships. Stephen’s areas of expertise cover tax-efficient investment solutions, pensions, retirement, estate and tax planning. Stephen has a particular interest in supporting individuals going through the process of separation as is registered as a Financial Specialist with Consensus Scotland.

Prior to joining Tilney, Stephen worked for two local Chartered Accountancy Firms over a seven year period and spent 10 years at Clydesdale Bank.

Tilney is an investment and financial planning firm that provides a truly personal service to private clients, companies, charities and trusts. We work with individuals from across the wealth spectrum at all stages of life and are proud to be a strategic partner of the Law Society of Scotland. In July 2016, Tilney acquired the financial planning and wealth management business Towry.

Austin Lafferty is a solicitor, broadcaster, journalist and artist, who has worked in general practice since 1981. As well as running his own multi-branch firm in and around Glasgow, Austin has been on the Council of the Law Society of Scotland since 2006 and has sat on various committees, convening the Nominations Committee and the Strategy Group, and been involved in lectures, seminars and other events for the profession. He was elected Vice-President of the Law Society in May 2011 and took over the presidency in May 2012, and is thus now a Past President of the Society. He remains on Council having been elected in 2013 for another 3-year term. Austin has also worked in a variety of media roles, having been a radio and television presenter on numerous programmes. At the BBC there is a saying “Austin Lafferty could talk under wet cement” - he’s not sure what this means, but chooses to take it as a compliment. Austin is a newspaper columnist on legal matters who has worked on the Herald, the Sun, the Sunday Post and the Times (both Glasgow Evening Times and the London Times). He works occasionally as a professional portrait artist in Glasgow. He has also written It's The Law! which is a handbook on Scots Law for citizens, published in 2004.

Jenny is an Associate with SKO and is accredited as a Specialist in Family Law by the Law Society of Scotland. She is also a FLAGS Family Arbitrator, a trained collaborative lawyer and lecturer in family law at the University of Edinburgh. Jenny’s practice principally encompasses two diverse areas of interest and experience: firstly advising on financial issues arising from relationships, involving, amongst other matters, corporate, property, taxation, jurisdictional, pension, privacy and defamation aspects. The second area of law that interests Jenny, and in which she has a growing reputation is in novel and/or complex child law matters including surrogacy, Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act matters, child support and relocation.

Ceit-Anna is an advocate practising in family law and child law. She regularly appears in the Court of Session and in the sheriff courts across Scotland. Ceit-Anna has many years of experience in litigation arising from the breakdown of relationships including financial provision on divorce and financial claims on the breakdown of cohabitation. She is regularly instructed in disputes involving children including residence, contact and relocation cases. Ceit-Anna is experienced in dealing with applications under the Hague Convention and with applications for permanence orders and adoption.

Andreas Stein is Head of Unit responsible for equality legislation at the European Commission’s Directorate General for Justice. He is a German lawyer holding a doctoral degree (University of Hamburg) and a postgraduate degree in International Relations (Johns Hopkins University SAIS Bologna). After several years of practising as judge at a labour tribunal he joined the Commission in 2001 and has worked in the areas of private international law, contract law, gender equality law and competition law before taking his current position.