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WJM Inverness support Highland Hospice “Make a Will” month
WJM Inverness are delighted to be participating in and supporting Highland Hospice’s Make a Will Month.
During May, solicitors across the Highlands, including WJM, will participate in this popular fundraiser for the Hospice.
The premise is simple: you make your Will at a participating solicitors, and instead of being charged a fee by the solicitors, you make a donation to Highland Hospice.
In Highland Hospice’s Spring Newsletter Angus MacLeod explained why WJM are supporting this initiative.
“Making a Will is more important than most people realise. Many of us simply don’t want to think about it. However, it is usually fairly easy to set one up, and this will then give you peace of mind. Without a Will, you cannot assume that even a surviving spouse won’t be forced into sharing the residuary estate with other beneficiaries.
Making a Will is not something just for the wealthy, you would be surprised at how the value of your possessions can add up.”
Read Highland Hospice’s Spring Newsletter. Highland Hospice’s Spring Newsletter
More on the Highland Hospice’s work here
Second successful Renewable Energy Mini-Conference
Yesterday WJM delivered a successful renewable energy mini-conference in Inverness. Aimed at landowners, community groups and those wanting to develop their own generation, the conference covered two key topics – how to finance your development and how to manage the planning process.
Over 70 attendees heard WJM’s Head of Renewables Andy McFarlane introduce keynote speaker, Jon Dobson from Greenbank Chartered Accountants, who spoke on the crucial area of making your renewables project ready for financing. In his talk, Jon said projects often fall at this first hurdle, mainly through a lack of proper preparation – he emphasised that developers should have their financial model organised right from the start.
Three workshops gave attendees a deeper insight into developing their own renewables project. Richard Fyfe from SEPA and Alisdair Macniven from rwe npower hydro along with members of WJM’s team, led an extremely popular workshop on hydro developments. A community renewables workshop featured contributions from Melanie McRae and Laura Nicolson from Community Energy Scotland.
David Bell of Jones Lang LaSalle and WJM’s Fraser Gillies led a planning workshop covering the types of issues developers will come across as their project moves from idea to reality. Finally WJM’s Graham Bell covered the business structures and contracts needed by a developer – whether solo, community or large scale.
Head of the firm’s Inverness office, Angus MacLeod, said “the conference was so successful that we’ll be holding another Renewable Energy event, possibly on supply chain in renewables, in the autumn. We’ve yet to finalise the date but it’s likely to be in September or October. We’re sure the Autumn event will be as well attended as this one.”
The Renewable Energy Mini-Conference is one of a series of national events offered by WJM covering business, commercial and personal law services.
Full details of WJM’s events and booking from WJM’s events page.
Quality of WJM’s in-house training recognised by grant of PEAT2 licence
Long known for its highly regarded training programme which has produced many high quality, very employable trainees over the years, Wright, Johnston & Mackenzie LLP is now celebrating formal recognition of its training.
WJM have been granted one of the first licences by the Law Society of Scotland to deliver the PEAT2 training programme in-house.
The Law Society noted that WJM’s training programme was ‘highly innovative’ and were satisfied that it would meet all of the objectives required by the new PEAT2 system. The training programme builds on WJM’s expertise in working with family business and business families and is centred around a fictional family business. Through exploring realistic scenarios, the programme equips trainees with the necessary hard and soft skills to adopt a client centric approach to the delivery of legal services.
The firm’s Chief Executive Graham Bell said, “As a firm we strive to be technically superb in everything we do, and we are very proud of the high standard of our in-house training. A key strand of that is the programme we put in place for our trainees. We invest heavily in their training to ensure they have the necessary skills which we think lawyers now need in order to best serve their clients’ interests. We are pleased the Law Society have recognised the investment we have made in our internal training by granting us a licence under PEAT2.”
He continued, “Even in the recent tough times, WJM has continued to invest in trainees and training so building a future for them and the firm. Achieving this accreditation is another step in developing and formalising our knowledge transfer base.”
