Keen is new Dean

Richard Keen takes over lead role at Faculty of Advocates

News, 27 November 2007

Richard Keen QC has been elected Dean of the Faculty of Advocates, it was announced today.

Mr Keen (53) takes up the office following a ballot of the Faculty's 730 members. The other contender was the current Vice-Dean, Valerie Stacey QC.

Educated at Dollar Academy and Edinburgh University, Mr Keen was called to the bar in 1980 and appointed a QC in 1993. He was elected treasurer of the Faculty last year. He succeeds Roy Martin QC who retired from the post earlier this month after three years in office.

Since his appointment as QC in 1993, Mr Keen's principal area of practice has been commercial litigation, extending to banking, insurance, engineering, construction and offshore energy.

However in 2000, he led the defence of Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, one of the two Libyans accused of the Pan Am/Lockerbie bombing, at the trial in the Netherlands. Fhimah was acquitted. Mr Keen is currently appearing for the family of Henri Paul at the coroner's inquest into the deaths of Diana Princess of Wales and Dodi Al Fayed.

He will be formally introduced as Dean tomorrow at the Advocates Library in Parliament House, Edinburgh.

The new Dean said: "It is a great privilege to be elected as Dean of the Faculty of Advocates. With that privilege comes responsibility - responsibility in particular for leading an independent and effective bar which continues to meet the needs of those who require its services and the aspirations of those who provide them.

"If things are to remain the same then some things will require to change."