Top Flight Family Lawyer

Emma Hatley re-enters our top-flight with a large number of recommendations from the family law community. ‘An incredibly good lawyer,’ beams one prominent industry peer, while another notes that Hatley’s team at Stewarts has ‘really come into the ascendancy’.

Indeed, the star lawyer tells Spear’s that ‘there hasn’t really been a lull’ over the past two and a half years.

‘Across the team here, everybody is working to capacity,’ she says. ‘We’ve got a very strong market share.’ Hatley puts her ability to attract a steady flow of big-money cases down to the ‘strength in depth’ across the team at Stewarts: ‘Whoever you deal with here, you get a [high] calibre lawyer.’

Renowned for her negotiating skills and ability to see the bigger picture, Hatley is a bona fide all-rounder, but her selfproclaimed speciality is in ‘complex financial work’. She’s keen to stress the distinctive strategy pioneered at her team.

‘I absolutely go into every case with the intention of trying to negotiate a settlement but with a litigation strategy underpinning it,’ she says. ‘We do not have the reputation of litigating endlessly and needlessly.’

While it’s not in her interests to ‘run up costs under litigation unnecessarily’, going into battle is certainly not out of the question. ‘If a fight is to be had, then I will definitely put the gloves on,’ she notes.