Balfour & Manson wins Faculty of Advocates tender

The Faculty of Advocates has awarded a tender for legal work to Balfour & Manson, marking the first new appointment to the role for many years.

Elaine Motion - 'our firm has equality in our DNA, and I think this was really important in winning the Faculty tender'. Picture: John Chadwick

The firm, which was founded in 1888 in Edinburgh and has more than 130 staff across its capital and Aberdeen operations, said it had been selected to provide legal services following a “rigorous” tender process.

The Faculty tendered for the external advice in areas including employment, property, charity governance, data protection and professional regulation. It also required the successful tender to comply with ten equality standards published by the Law Society of Scotland and confirmation that the successful firm would sign up for the Faculty’s fair instruction policy.

Elaine Motion, executive chairman of Balfour & Manson, said: “This is tremendous news and a real honour for the firm. We instruct members of Faculty regularly and have had a close and productive working relationship with both individual members and the Faculty as a whole.”

She added: “Our firm has equality in our DNA, and I think this was really important in winning the Faculty tender.

“We were the first firm in Scotland to appoint a female partner, Ethel Houston, in 1949 and we believe we are the only firm of our size in Scotland to have a majority female partnership.”

Iain Reid of the Faculty of Advocates added: “We were impressed with [the firm’s] comprehensive response to our tender exercise.”