‘A Practical Guide to Conducting a Sheriff Court Proof – Second Edition’ by Andrew Stevenson

Description

This book is a practical guide to conducting a proof in the sheriff court, based on the author’s many years’ experience of presenting evidence at proofs and hearings in the sheriff court, the Court of Session and before tribunals.

The guide highlights the importance of risk management in an area of law that is fraught with hazards concerning costs, timescales and adverse outcomes. It also identifies many useful steps that ought to be taken with a view to minimising such hazards and making the process of conducting a proof as smooth and as painless as possible.

The book is aimed primarily at practitioners and deals with managing clients, advice on preparation and how best to cover one’s back in this perilous area of legal practice. Although reference is made to court rules and textbooks the book is first and foremost a practical guide.

In this Second Edition, the author takes accounts of the settling of the dust after Covid-19, the spread of the use of affidavit evidence and the rise of Artificial Intelligence.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andrew Stevenson is a practising solicitor advocate at Waddell and Mackintosh, Troon. He has undertaken many hundreds of proofs across Scotland since 1992 in virtually all areas of litigation and has long experience of acting as a commissioner to recover evidence in sheriff court actions both civil and criminal. Andrew is a former President of the Glasgow Bar Association and he is Secretary of the Scottish Law Agents’ Society. He is also a committee member of the Society of Solicitor Advocates. Andrew has written extensively on civil procedure and gives seminars on proofs and litigation. He is a contributor to Greens Litigation Styles and is a regular columnist for The Scotsman. He is a vice convenor of the Discipline Tribunal of the Church of Scotland and has drafted church legislation. He is the author of Style Writs for the Sheriff Court, Bloomsbury 2023.

CONTENTS

Chapter 1 – Introduction
Chapter 2 – Risk Management, Forum Shopping and Legal Aid
Chapter 3 – Capacities, Officers of the Court and Party Litigants
Chapter 4 – Acting as Agent for a Litigant or for Another Solicitor
Chapter 5 – The Solicitor’s Personal Responsibility for Outlays
Chapter 6 – Risk Management: How to Avoid Having to Conduct a Proof
Chapter 7 – Before the Proof Date Is Assigned
Chapter 8 – Affidavits
Chapter 9 – Managing the Evidence That Is Needed at a Proof
Chapter 10 – Intimating and Lodging Lists of Documents, Witnesses, Affidavits and Productions
Chapter 11 – Practical Advance Steps to Make Life as Easy as Possible on the Day
Chapter 12 – Using Evidence at the Proof; Witnesses
Chapter 13 – Calling Witnesses
Chapter 14 – Credibility Versus Reliability and Objecting to the Opponent’s Questions
Chapter 15 – Cross Examination
Chapter 16 – Judicial Knowledge, and the Law of Evidence
Chapter 17 – Running a Hopeless Proof, and the Post Mortem Where a Proof Is Lost
Conclusion and Bibliography