This year’s dinner was a sellout and no wonder with the new Keeper of the Signet, Lady Elish Angiolini speaking for the first occasion following her appointment. Invited guests, including the Lord Justice Clerk, Lady Dorrian, and law firms both large and small with their guests and contacts mingled together at the Champagne reception before going upstairs to the upper hall of the Signet Library for dinner. Larger firms represented included Burness Paull, Pinsent Masons, CMS, Burges Salmon, Brodies, Morton Fraser MacRoberts, while more niche players included Vialex, Manolete and Burke Legal. The Law Society of Scotland were also well represented. Deputy Keeper Mandy Laurie was host for the evening and, after dinner, introduced Lady Elish as the guest speaker. Lady Elish reflected on her appointment as Lord Clerk Register and Keeper of the Signet, before talking the audience through her early life growing up near Ibrox Stadium in Glasgow and her first encounter with the legal system when, as a seventeen-year-old volunteer, she helped a woman living in poverty with an appeal before a social security tribunal. That was the first time, Lady Elish said, she realised the power of law to transform people’s lives. It was a wonderful speech demonstrating Lady Elish’s down to earth integrity, insight, humour, and conviction about the role of law in society.
