Family law – a people person’s ideal specialism In our first blog of the Careers Spotlight series, Emma Somerville (partner at Kee Solicitors) shares her experience with family law

Family law is a very rewarding area of the law and you form more personal relationships with clients than other types of solicitors might. That has both positive and negative effects on case management. In a positive sense, you build a greater rapport with your client, which if you are a people person is ideal. Furthermore, if the case involves a client who lacks in confidence at the start of a case – whether that’s due to coercive or controlling behaviour from their former spouse or partner or simply not having an understanding of the separation process – if your client is more confident and informed at the end of the case it’s great personal satisfaction to know you helped them get to that point.

The negatives include navigating the management of your client’s expectations. Unlike a corporate matter, in family matters you are dealing with a person’s life. They are personally invested in achieving the best possible outcome to ensure they are protected in future. With that and the more personal relationship you have, clients can sometimes assume that you will be available to talk to them when they need you. Managing client expectations between moving things around if the matter is urgent but making them wait for their appointment when it’s not is a hard balance. Further, when it comes to financial separation, a client will want as much as they can achieve in terms of settlement. It can often be hard to manage a client’s expectations when they have, for example, converted a non-matrimonial asset into a matrimonial asset. They may want the whole asset discounted and removed from settlement discussions, but that is not always possible depending on the circumstances.

Another positive working in family law is there’s a lot of diversity in the services you can offer. Personally, I may need to put on my litigator hat in the morning to argue matters relating to contact with a child at a child welfare hearing, but in the afternoon put on my alternative dispute resolution hat for a collaborative case to try and agree a financial settlement following separation. Both require different mindsets and different skills in order to achieve the overall goal. Of course, a day that looks to be all appointments and catching up with case work can be thrown off track, for example if a client comes to the office clutching court papers or if I need to take instructions on raising an emergency court action for return of a child. Family law is a great area to get into if you like having some litigation work as well as some office-based work and being focused on people.

I believe family law matters because clients who are going through some of the most difficult times of their life including divorce, separation and separation from their children, need support and need to know what their rights are and what options they have. Family solicitors can seek protective orders for the individual and their family, for example in domestic abuse situations. They can secure children who may be orphaned or have had to be removed from their natural parents, with loving families, therefore securing them a brighter future. They can help a spouse manage a difficult financial separation and ensure they receive a settlement that allows them to financially look after themselves in future.

Family law crosses over with a number of other areas of the law. For example, spouses may be in partnership together or may be directors and shareholders of a company. That company or partnership might not be strictly matrimonial property, but it still needs to be resolved as part of the overall matrimonial separation. It crosses with conveyancing as in order to sell a matrimonial home you need to have a Minute of Agreement to determine what each spouse is to receive from any proceeds of sale or transfer of the house. You may need to advise a colleague on occupancy rights or discuss legal and prior rights as part of a matrimonial separation or pre/post nuptial agreement. You might even have a cross over with criminal law, if one of the spouses/partners has been arrested for a domestic matter and has special conditions of bail. Overall, it’s a complex and interesting area of the law to work in and family law is essential to provide individuals with a means to protect themselves and their families.

I completed the Undergraduate LLB Honors Degree at the Robert Gordon University in 2011. I then had a brief period away from university before commencing my Diploma in Professional Legal Practice at the University of Dundee, which was completed in 2013. I was lucky enough to obtain a traineeship during the course of my Diploma in a firm where I had taken up work experience. This was a predominantly criminal legal practice based in the city center of Dundee. Most of my work was based around criminal law with the occasional family law or child law matter included. After a year of my traineeship, I assigned to a small high street firm in Angus and moved predominantly into family law. This practice was thereafter bought over by a larger firm in Dundee and I moved into sole family law practice.

At the end of my traineeship, I took up employment with a high street firm in Dundee offering both family law and criminal law services. In October 2016, I moved to an Aberdeen firm and remained there until 2022, when I took up my current role at Kee Solicitors as a Partner. Since October 2016, I have focused solely on family law matters and trained in collaborative practice in 2018. I was then accredited by the Law Society of Scotland as a specialist in family law in December 2021.

Family law is not an area I thought I would have an interest in whilst at university. However, the day-to-day practice of family law work is very different from the undergraduate degree, which I suspect is the case for most areas of the law. If you are a trainee solicitor and you are still unsure what area of the law you want to go into, there is still plenty of time to decide. As you can see from my career journey you might have some cross over before you make your final decision.