Courts and Legal Bodies

These pages are designed to provide help and information to anyone with record-keeping responsibilities in the Scottish courts and other legal bodies which transmit their records to the National Records of Scotland (NRS). In the NRS the Court and Legal Records (CLR) carries out the Keeper of the Records of Scotland's responsibilities for these public records.

What CLR do

CLR sits within Archive Depositor Liaison and deals with all aspects of NRS’s relationship with its depositors.

The functions of CLR can best be summarised in the following list:

• We accept record transmissions from our depositors in accordance with current public records legislation.
• We appraise court and legal records in accordance with current legislation, and select those regarded as worthy of permanent preservation.
• We provide advice to our depositors on best practice for dealing with court and legal records, both in paper and electronic formats, this includes developing, in collaboration with depositors, agreements.
• We return transmitted records when depositors request them for their use.
• We catalogue court and legal records held in the NRS, and promote public access to them through our public on-line catalogue.
• On behalf of the Keeper deal with requests for access to closed historical court records under FOI(S)A within agreed timescales.

Read our transmissions section for information on depositing court and legal records with the NRS; the on-line forms required for making deposits and information on re-transmissions.

For detailed information about your area of responsibility go to one of the following:

• Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service (for enquiries relating to Supreme Courts and Sheriff Courts)
• Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service 
• Registers of Scotland (external site)

Contacting CLR

Due to Covid-19, CLR staff are working remotely and unable to receive phone enquires. Please contact us via our various email contacts below. For full information, please refer to our Covid-19 Information pages.

The following contact numbers are for the use of staff in the Scottish courts and other legal bodies who deposit records with the NRS. They can also contact us on [email protected]. If you have a more general query about court and legal records – for example about how to get access to them or what they contain – please contact the relevant search room (Historical Search Room or Legal Search Room) through our contact us page.

Alternatively, please write to:

Court and Legal Records
The National Records of Scotland
Thomas Thomson House
99 Bankhead Crossway North
Sighthill
Edinburgh
EH11 4DX

Emergency Contacts

In the event of emergencies or disasters affecting the records in any way, the NRS should be informed immediately.

Information Access

Within information legislation there a number of ways in which individuals can make request to access information held within the NRS’ Court and Legal deposits. For full guidance on this please refer to our Archives and Data Protection pages.