Family Law Firm of the Year – South

It was a big night for the Stephens Scown family law team at the 2019 Family Law Awards in London last night, where we scooped the award of Family Law Firm of the Year (South).

During our return trip to the office today, Sarah Walls, Sarah Atkinson and I have been reflecting on the evening and more broadly on the firm's achievements over this last 12 months.

It is an extremely interesting time to be a family lawyer. After many years of campaigning we are on the cusp of seeing a change to the requirements needed to start a divorce in England and Wales. It now seems that a no fault divorce process is within reach and could well become law within the next 12 months. At Stephens Scown, we know all too well how overdue this change is, having applied a great deal of time and energy with our clients over the years navigating a constructive route through what can, by default, be a process that focuses on blame at the outset, often setting the wrong tone for negotiating a financial settlement.

We really do consider that the change, provided it comes in, will be the most positive development in Family law in this country since removal of discrimination against wives and the introduction of pension sharing, nearly 20 years ago.

Being recognised experts in many of the more complicated areas of family law does not come at the expense of empathy or a recognition of just how difficult a divorce can be for our clients. For a number of years now we have been working closely with counsellors to ensure our clients are signposted to the emotional help they might need when first coming to see us. We will often work together with IFAs and other financial professionals from an early stage of the process to ensure that the client has all of the information they need to make the informed decisions that are going to make a difference to their futures.

More and more firms nationwide are taking similar approaches to this, and our award last night was based in no small part on the extent to which we are spearheading what is quite obviously a holistic and personal approach that is to our clients' benefit.

We would like to thank all of our professional contacts on LinkedIn for working with us and our clients over the years and helping shape what we are proud to say is a sector-leading team in the family law world.

It's extremely rewarding and we are immensely proud to receive such recognition from our peers.