Feminist barrister Charlotte Proudman has opened her own family law firm providing ‘trauma-informed’ representation, in a bid to improve the experience of clients and drive change in the court process.
Proudmans opens today in London and Cambridge, specialising in financial remedy after divorce, and private and international children proceedings, with a particular focus on helping those affected by domestic abuse.
Regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, the firm will operate as an alternative business structure, combining solicitors, barristers and paralegals to offer a one-stop shop to the public.
Proudman told the Gazette that the firm will also undertake ‘strategic litigation’ designed to challenge ‘systemic failings’ in the family justice system in the UK and abroad and to ‘bring transparency, accountability and reform to a system that too often operates behind closed doors’.
The barrister, who specialises in cases concerning violence against women and girls, said: ‘I founded Proudmans after witnessing first-hand the challenges faced by mothers and children in family courts, particularly survivors of domestic abuse who struggle to find trauma-informed legal representation.‘Too often clients go through proceedings without lawyers who truly understand the insidious, immobilising nature of coercive control and post-separation abuse.’
The firm seeks to offer ‘trauma-informed’ representation - a client-centred approach that means recognising how trauma affects clients’ behaviour, communication, decision-making, and ability to engage with the legal process, and adapting legal practices to accommodate their needs and avoid re-traumatising them.
Through her work training legal professionals through SafeLives, a charity dedicated to ending domestic abuse, Proudman said: ‘I’ve seen how transformative trauma-informed practice can be and how rare it still is.’
She added: ‘Founding Proudmans has been a long-held dream. It feels like the culmination of years of practice and campaigning for reform, and the beginning of a new chapter. I am proud to build a firm that reflects the principles I’ve spent my career fighting for, and to train the next generation of family lawyers, who together will have a greater impact on changing the system and the lives of our clients.’
Previously at Goldsmith Chambers in London - where she will remain as a door tenant - Proudman is joined by Manveet Chhina, the solicitor who represented her pro bono when she was charged by the Bar Standards Board with professional misconduct over tweets in which she criticised a judge for being part of the ‘boys’ club’, after a ruling he gave in a family law case that Proudman lost. The tribunal dismissed the charge, ruling that she had no case to answer.
Mona Faham, a graduate from Berkley University, California, who works to promote human rights and advocates for marginalised people, also joins the firm as a paralegal.
Proudman is looking for other lawyers who share her values of ‘integrity, courage, and compassion’ to join the firm.
One of its first cases is a pro bono instruction from a journalist, seeking to report publicly about psychological reports ordered in the family courts on the controversial issue of parental alienation.
Proudman said: ‘Advocacy is most powerful when grounded in conviction. I’ve been told I “care too much”; I take that as the highest compliment,’ adding that she sees her work as an advocate ‘as a vocation, not simply a career’.
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