When Camilla Baldwin took some time off to have her children twelve years ago, the founder of the eponymous niche law firm sat for a time as an immigration judge. It’s that drive which has led the straight-talking Baldwin, who learned the ropes at Kingsley Napley and Withers, to the top. She first worked with Diana Parker and Charles Doughty on (in her own words) ‘extraordinary cases’ involving Greek shipping billionaires, European royalty and in one instance, acting for the wife of a Nigerian tribal chief (‘He was as rich as Croesus until I came along,’ she previously told Spear’s).

Unusually for a family lawyer, Melissa Lesson spent two years at the bar before joining Mishcon de Reya in 2000. Four years later, she worked with Sandra Davis (see page 69) on reported case Minwalla v Minwalla, in which the duo successfully challenged the husband’s motives for holding assets in foreign trusts and also addressed the enforcement of an English order against those trusts.

Peers attest that the bar’s ‘go-to children silk’ is quick to put clients at ease with his ‘down-to-earth and diplomatic’ approach. Alex Verdan’s ‘powerful and eloquent’ advocacy skills have also won him praise from a celebrity client base: he achieved a successful result for Guy Ritchie after a tough nine-month custody battle with Madonna to keep their son Rocco in London.

Lucy Stone is a big-money heavyweight and ‘one of the most impassioned advocates at the family law bar’ who will use her ‘extraordinary judgement’ to ‘fight your cause to the end’, a peer promises. It is no wonder she’s earned the apt moniker ‘Lucy-No-Stone-left-unturned’ and has a thank-you plaque from a Rolling Stone on her office wall.

QEB’s rising star Amy Kisser is rated as ‘ferociously bright’ with an ability to ‘hold her own against any silk’ by peers. The engaging Oxford graduate is the new go-to junior barrister for complex financial cases, ‘with an ability to absorb and analyse a wealth of information that is second to none’.