Faculty of Advocates
independent body of lawyers
The Faculty of Advocates (Scottish Gaelic: Dàmh an Luchd-tagraidh) is an independent body of lawyers who have been admitted to practise as advocates before the courts of Scotland, especially the Court of Session and the High Court of Justiciary. The Faculty of Advocates is a constituent part of the College of Justice and is based in Edinburgh.
Advocates are privileged to plead in any cause before any of the courts of Scotland, including the sheriff courts and district courts, where counsel are not excluded by statute.
History
The Faculty has existed since 1532 when the College of Justice was set up by Act of the Parliament of Scotland, but its origins are believed to predate that event. No curriculum of study, residence or professional training was, until 1856, required on entering this profession, but the faculty always had the power of rejecting any candidate for admission. Subsequently candidates underwent two private examinations; one in general scholarship that could be substituted by evidence of an equivalent university degree, and the other, at the interval of a year, in Roman, private international and Scots law, along with evidence of having attended approved classes. For a long period the Faculty resisted reorganisation, until changes in admissions were introduced in 1960.
The first woman to be admitted to the faculty was Margaret Kidd in July 1923, who remained Scotland's only female advocate until 1948. Kidd served as Keeper of the Advocates' Library 1956–1969. In 2004 the first female vice-dean of the faculty was elected.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5428890. VIAF identifies the subject as 122982147. The Library of Congress control number is n84233414. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1532, 1856, 1960 and 1923.
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This entry incorporates text from “Faculty of Advocates” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.