Top Ten Family Lawyers

Reported cases – cases that make law, that is – are still worn like a badge of honour by many lawyers. But not so in family law. ‘Clients should perhaps choose their lawyers by who has the fewest reported cases rather than the other way around,’ says Withers’ super-solicitor Julian Lipson. ‘Too many reported cases is a failure, and fewer is a success because you’ve got them done discreetly and quickly, and people haven’t become a cause célèbre.’

That’s not to say Lipson hasn’t had his share of big cases in the past year (he has a growing niche acting for Premier League footballers and continues to work on a large number of cases involving the United States and France), nor that he’s one to skirt around straight talk.

To the contrary, he’s clear about how he would change family law if he had the power. ‘I’d make it more like it used to be, when it had judges who were respected and paid properly for what they did, who had enough people to support them so they weren’t having to be a general factotum as well as make the decisions,’ he says. ‘They are utterly unsupported; the [system] doesn’t deserve the respect it has… The experience of the consumer is ten times worse than it was ten years ago.’

Described by market authorities as a ‘phenomenal, meticulous performer’, Lipson joined Withers in 1997 and was elected to the firm’s partnership in 2003.