Naomi Angell

DURING the week of International Women’s Day I look back at my career.

This year marks my 50th year of practice as a solicitor, and a career in law for a woman has changed beyond recognition, although there are still battles to be fought.

In the early 70s when I embarked on my legal career, I was just one of a handful of women training to be a solicitor. Doing court work, we fought against the misogyny of many of the male judges.

From the time I adopted my three children in the 80s, I have been lucky to have been able to work part-time. But typically, for a woman wanting to return to her legal career after a career gap, it is not guaranteed that she will be able to get back into her area of specialisation and regain her seniority.

Stubbornly, I did not give up, and now with fewer family responsibilities I am still doing the work I love.

What has defined my legal career is that alongside my casework as a children’s lawyer, I have always fought to shape children and family law for the future.

I suppose these days I could be called an “activist lawyer”, but if you can see from your cases that there is an injustice or need for change, belief is that one has a responsibility to try to change it.

My first step into shifting the goal posts of access to law was while I was in my articles. My flat mate was a detached youth worker with a project in the East End.

Detached, in this context, means that the youth worker goes to where the young can be found in their own territory, such as the estates and clubs. With little to occupy them, many of these youngsters had been drawn into petty crime.

There were no solicitors to represent them in the area and, in any case, these young people had no idea of their right to legal advice and representation so they risked a criminal record for life.

I began accompanying my friend, effectively becoming a “detached” legal worker, supporting her work by trying to help them get legal help. This was one of reason for the establishment of two new law centres in the area.

On qualifying as a lawyer, my first job was with a firm in Acton close to the first women’s refuge, Chiswick Women’s Aid. The firm worked closely with the centre, and my boss spearheaded recognition in the law for domestic violence, at that time a hidden societal problem.

My next career move was to the newly established Camden Law Centre. I worked on a range of legal problems affecting a community who had little access to justice.

One case that I will not forget is working in partnership with the joint shops steward of the trade union, UCATT, fighting an equal pay case against the council. It was a great win for the women.

They each received compensation, but even more importantly it made them a force to be reckoned with in further council battles. It was in law centres that Children’s Law became recognised as a specialist area.

Up to the late 70s there was no real children’s law, when children were removed from their families. Children and their parents were largely unrepresented and the law was antiquated and unfair and breached human rights in many ways. It was this that led to my next career move, to Wilfred McBain, the country’s first dedicated children’s law practice.

In our casework, we realised that there was much that needed to change to give families the access to justice they had a right to in an area of law not fit for purpose. In 1979 – the International Year of the Child – the founder of Wilfred McBain and I were invited to a meeting to discuss the project that could best be the best flagship for the International Year. We proposed the establishment of a national children’s legal centre.

I left the law practice to devote myself to a feasibility study and fundraising role to set up a children’s legal centre.

Nearly 25 years on, the children’s legal centre still thrives, now as Coram Children’s Legal Centre. In 1981, the centre was up and running, so I embarked on the next adventure in my personal and professional life.

During the next 12 years, my husband and I adopted three children, two boys and a girl. It was a masterclass on learning about adoption law, as I conducted all three adoption applications. I learned firsthand how social workers were constrained by the rigid requirements at that time of matching children’s ethnicity to that of their prospective adoptive parents. This was impossible in a multicultural city like London.

My efforts since then have been to work on a national and local level to improve the law and practices of adoption. As a family lawyer, I have seen dramatic changes in the concept of families. In the 70s, I had cases where women separating from their husbands and coming out as gay would lose their children in custody disputes, regardless of the welfare of the children.

Now, heterosexual two-parent families bringing up birth children exist alongside children from a range of alternative family structures. I received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Law Society in 2020, and now head the Adoption, Surrogacy and Fertility Law Unit, but I am still committed to achieving the best result for my clients and trying to change the law. W

hat advice would I give to a young lawyer embarking on their legal practice? If you are lucky enough to find something in your professional life that you love and believe in, then stick with it. Your passion will ensure that you’ll do it all the better.

Naomi Angell is a consultant solicitor at Osbornes Law and head of the adoption, surrogacy and fertility law unit