Family Lawyers 2018

A former libel lawyer, Jane McDonagh found her calling in family law after she helped her own mother with her divorce. ‘It made me realise how rewarding it could be to support someone through this process,’ the head of SMB’s family team says. ‘For some people it’s an emotional journey – they are in mourning and in fear for their children’s future and their financial security. Others take a pragmatic approach.’ McDonagh recently won a ‘huge’ case where the opposing party failed to disclose significant assets in the original hearing, committing ‘perjury on a grand scale’: ‘I would like to see a more robust stance taken towards parties who fail to make significant disclosures.’

One of Farrer’s leading lights, William Massey remains involved in cutting-edge cases. In a November 2016 re-hearing of Goddard-Watts v Goddard-Watts – where non-disclosure of assets had unravelled the original consent order – Massey’s client was awarded an additional £6.42 million. While Massey has undoubtedly played a significant role in shaping the future of family law, his demeanour is understated. ‘An awful lot of the skill in what we do is being able to manage the expectations of clients,’ he says. ‘We have to win their trust and reassure them that our aim is to obtain the best outcome in the least litigious way possible.’

‘You can’t be a family lawyer if you recoil from the messiness of human life,’ says Renato Labi. Divorces with offshore elements form part of his caseload, as do prenups ‘in the hundreds of millions’ and child relocation matters. He says family lawyers need an aptitude to become ‘temporarily expert’ on different facets of the financial and tech worlds. But he adds that there’s ‘a fine balance’ between the technical and emotional challenges of the work: ‘We’re very expensive and completely unqualified therapists,’ he suggests with humour. Labi, a partner at HFC since 2005, is highly regarded, with one peer hailing him as ‘sharp, smart and always on the front foot’.

William Longrigg joined Charles Russell as an articled clerk in 1985 and simply never left. ‘There was never anywhere better to go,’ he says. Longrigg predicts Brexit will have a ‘very significant’ impact on family law: ‘For the past decade or so, EU states have had quite an efficient system. Of course, now, that’s going to be completely swept under the table.’ Although the UK’s current system is very thorough and ‘has to be commended for that’, it’s ‘too cumbersome, too expensive and too uncertain’. If he had his way, Brexit might present an opportunity for ‘significant streamlining and simplification’. But will it happen? ‘Alas, that’s extremely unlikely.’

A previous Spear’s Family Lawyer of the Year, Suzanne Kingston has spent much of the year advising trustees on ‘divorce-proofing’, stress-testing and fine-tuning their asset-holding structures against drastic circumstances. She recently advised one UHNW private equity principal with ‘really complex international tax issues’, and remains busy with a wide range of global prenups. Kingston highlights an ‘evolution’ out of court, as more HNWs sign up to a ‘hybrid’ model of mediation where the lawyers are usually present and more contiguous negotiations are encouraged. ‘It’s going to be a really interesting model for family – and it’s great to be at the cutting edge of that,’ she says.