Professional information

Lord Drummond Young accepts instructions for opinion and advisory work and for arbitration and mediation.

  • 2020: Resumed practice with Axiom Advocates
  • 2001: Judge of the Court of Session
  • 1988: Appointed Silk
  • 1984-1988: Standing Junior Counsel to the Inland Revenue and previously the Department of Industry
  • 1976: Called to the Bar
Professional experience

Lord Drummond Young specializes in financial and commercial law. In the Court of Session he was a judge of the Commercial Court from 2001 to 2012, and was required to adjudicate on numerous commercial and financial disputes. The commercial work involved a wide range of building and other contracts. He also dealt with most of the cases in the Court involving insolvency, trusts, pension schemes and company law. In the Inner House much of his work, including opinions of the Court written by him, involved commercial law, financial law and taxation. Apart from commercial contracts, his work has covered the administration of pension schemes, company law, agency, and the fiduciary duties of directors and agents. He has also dealt with the impact of government or EU regulation, such as public procurement legislation, on commercial dealings, and with the application of private international law and international treaties to commercial transactions.

He was Chairman of the Scottish Law Commission from 2007 to 2012. While at the Commission he became the lead Commissioner in the major project on Trust Law, which resulted in the Report on Trust Law (Scot Law Com No 239, 2014). He also took part in projects concerned with reform of the law on land registration and on moveable property.

Select publications
  • Contributor, Stair Memorial Encyclopaedia of the Laws of Scotland, Trusts and Trustees: “Fiduciary duties of trustees and others”; this covers the fiduciary duties of trustees, company directors, and agents generally.
  • (With JB St Clair): St Clair and Drummond Young, The Law of Corporate Insolvency in Scotland, 4th edition, 2011.
  • “Trust, Agency and Lehman Brothers”, essay in Nothing so Practical as a Good Theory, Festschrift for George L Gretton, 2017; this covers the fiduciary responsibilities of agents.
  • Appellate courts, Parts 1-2 and 3 (2015 SLT (News) 125, 130 and 138: articles in the Scots Law Times on the role of an appellate court in dealing with decisions by courts of first instance, and including an analysis of the functions performed by first instance judges.