Biography

Paul is one of the most experienced commercial litigation solicitors practising in Scotland. He qualified in 1984 and so has been practising for 38 years. He has been a solicitor advocate since 1998. He practised in New Zealand between 1990 and 1993 appearing as counsel at many levels including the New Zealand Court of Appeal in 1991.

Amongst the vast range of litigation Paul has handled during his long career are included many judicial reviews (two in 2022) and two international arbitrations together with related Court of Session appeals (in 2016/2018 and 2019/2022). Paul has handled many complex company and shareholder disputes.  In 2021 he was involved in a multi-jurisdictional £58m shareholder dispute involving Scotland, England, Cyprus, China and the Cayman Islands. In 2022 he acted in a highly complex, multi-faceted high pressure, shareholder dispute, see the quoted example in this submission. Paul is often called upon to carry out emergency litigation and has huge experience in dealing with interdict (injunction) applications as well as “Dawn Raids” (*formerly Anton Piller orders in England). He dealt with an urgent injunction in the High Court Queens Bench Division over Christmas 2021/2022, seeking to restrain the holding of a meeting. He appeared in 2008/9 in the Wishart case which remains the leading Scottish authority on shareholder derivative actions: ALEXANDER MARSHALL WISHART v. CASTLECROFT SECURITIES LIMITED AND OTHERS (scotcourts.gov.uk)

Paul is also recognised in Scotland as a leading practitioner in data protection (one of only three Accredited Specialists in private practice in Scotland), social media and reputational law. He is regularly in court on these matters. See CAROL BEYTS AGAINST TRUMP INTERNATIONAL GOLF CLUB SCOTLAND LIMITED (scotcourts.gov.uk); ANTHONY WOOLLEY AND DEBORAH WOOLLEY AGAINST NAHID AKBAR OR AKRAM (scotcourts.gov.uk); and Heather Hiram -v- Alana Mullen 2020scedin23.pdf (scotcourts.gov.uk) He has contributed comment to BBC Radio Scotland and BBC Five Live Drive on these topics, often at short notice. He writes articles for the legal and mainstream media and lectures on his subjects regularly. He has also engaged with Facebook, Twitter, TripAdvisor and US news websites in relation to reputational matters.   

Paul founded and heads BTO BeCreative, a niche team focused on servicing the legal needs of the Scottish creative industries. He has also devised and presented seminar/workshops at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe to an audience of theatrical agents and managers for the past ten years. These focused on artistic, dramatic and media copyright law issues and contractual matters. He advises on artist management contracts, production and recording contracts, copyright licensing and intellectual property matters. This includes claims for royalties and unauthorised derivative works. He has advised book authors and poets as well as the music industry.