Gillian graduated from the University of Aberdeen in 2014 with an LL.B (Honours) Degree in Scots Law and with a Postgraduate Diploma in Professional Legal Practice with distinction in 2015. She trained at an all-service civil litigation firm and uniquely had her first court appearance within one week of her traineeship commencing and has remained a court practitioner ever since.
Prior to calling to the Bar in 2025 Gillian was a criminal defence solicitor. She regularly appeared in court and is well versed in conducting criminal trials, both at solemn and summary level. She is experienced in challenging the admissibility of evidence, conducting trials within a trial, and challenging the compatibility of proceedings with the European Convention on Human Rights.
She also took an interest in children’s referrals and established her own children’s hearings practice within an established criminal defence firm.
Since calling to the Bar in 2025, Gillian has been instructed in an array of criminal cases in both the Sheriff Court and the Hight Court, including sexual offence and domestic abuse cases. She has also been instructed to represent children accused of violent offending, to undertake children’s referral work and to defend permanence order proceedings.
She has a keen interest in human rights and criminal appeal work and is available for instruction in all aspects of criminal matters and children’s referral work.
HMA v MM [2022] – appointed to represent the accused in a complex domestic abuse case where the allegations spanned decades. In addition to the necessary challenges to the admissibility of evidence, careful consideration required to be given to the parameters of the court appointment in light of the accused’s instructions and attitude towards the case.
HMA v AP [2024] – the accused was acquitted at an evidential hearing on the charges of police assault, resisting arrest and acting in a threatening and abusive manner following a challenge to the lawfulness of police action. It was accepted that the police had no lawful authority to place the accused in handcuffs and then into the back of a police van, therefore the accused’s subsequent behaviour was justified in response to the unlawful detention.