Lawyer Monthly Magazine - March 2020 Edition

I’m a Partner of and Head of the Family Law Team at Morton Fraser. I’ve been here since 2002, when the small firm where I was previously a partner, merged with them. Before I came to MF, although the greater part of my practice consisted of family law, I also did some personal injury andmedical negligence work. On arrival at MF, I had to decide which area I wanted to specialise in going forward. I chose family law and haven’t looked back! Lots of people asked me at the time if dealing with nothing but divorcing clients wasn’t going to be terribly depressing, but in truth, I have really enjoyed it. It has helped greatly to be surrounded by an excellent and highly collegiate team. We are one of Scotland’s biggest family law teams, spread across our offices in Edinburgh and Glasgow. No matter how tricky or obscure the problem, there is always someone inmy team who has experienced the issue and can offer some words of wisdom. The team have all been encouraged to develop their niche interests and we can boast expertise in many aspects of family law, from international child abduction to prenuptial agreements, and from public law children cases to farming divorces. The two things I’ve done during my legal career which have had the biggest impact on my practice as a family lawyer have been firstly, training as a family mediator, and secondly, becoming dual qualified in Scots and English law. I became an accredited mediator, long ago in 1998 (which makes me feel very old!) I found mediation training quite inspirational – the insights and techniques I learned have definitely informed my entire approach to practice. Mediation has never been the mainstay of my work but I have had a fairly steady stream of it in recent years. When it works, it’s very rewarding. Learning about English family law was fascinating for a Scots lawyer – the legal language, and to some extent the underpinning philosophical approach, is quite different. My practice is now mainly centred on financial provision and seems increasingly to feature cases either with an intra- UK cross-Border element or cases with an international element. court in the place in which they have been living. Do you think much will change in this area with Brexit? That’s a very good question, to which I don’t think that anybody currently has a clear answer! Given that our jurisdictional rules in family cases are all based on European Regulations, there will undoubtedly be some changes, but exactly what will change is not yet clear. There are some who would favour reciprocal arrangements with the EU which would have the effect of maintaining the current framework, and others who would like to take this opportunity to entirely re-write the rules. Now that Brexit has finally happened, I think it’s very likely that over the coming months, interested bodies will start to engage about what they would like to see happening next. LM Rhona Adams’ story into law An Interview With 56 WWW.LAWYER-MONTHLY.COM | MAR 2020 “The ultimate decision about where to apply for divorce can depend upon various considerations, such as where the bulk of the assets are situated.”