Solicitor – Family

Salary

£Competitive

Location

Southampton

This is a permanent, full time vacancy that will close in 2 months at 23:59 GMT.

The vacancy

Moore Barlow is currently seeking a Solicitor (or Chartered Legal Executive) to join our Family Team based in Southampton.

More about us:

Formed via a merger in 2020, Moore Barlow is a leading law firm aiming to be the best law firm to work for regionally. We are a career firm, providing access to high-quality work, long-term career opportunities and an environment built on the premise of being "human first" in everything we do. Put simply, we care as much about your career as you do.

We are featured in The Times' Best Law Firms 2025 list, and consistently achieve recognition for the quality of our services in the Legal 500 and Chambers & Partners, including specific recognition for our work in Family Law.

We are now 450 people, including 280 lawyers and 58 Partners, with offices across the South-East and London.

More about the Family Team

Led by Joanna Farrands (Partner), our specialist Family Team, and a number of individual lawyers, have received recognition in both the Legal 500 and Chambers & Partners. Our team are known for providing a supportive and collaborative service, believing that our efforts should be focused on achieving the right outcome for our clients.

Ours is a large and experienced team handling high-net-worth and complex matters. With offices in London, Richmond, Woking, Guildford, Southampton, and Lymington, we are ideally placed to act for clients in the HNW hubs of London and the Home Counties.

Here is some further information on the type of work our team handles:

• Finance: we regularly deal with HNW and UHNW financial remedy matters both in and out of the court system. Our financial remedy cases are frequently complex and include trusts, non-marital assets, business structures, pensions, and inherited wealth, as well as more volatile assets such as stocks and shares. We often act for international clients and many of these cases have an international element.

• Family agreements: either pre or post-nuptial agreements, but also cohabitants. We also, where appropriate, secure "mirror" agreements in other jurisdictions.

• Non-court dispute resolution: there are four collaboratively trained lawyers in the team, as well as four mediators – we encourage and recommend the NCDR route wherever possible.

• Accord – one couple, one lawyer, one aim: in October 2022, we launched this scheme which enables clients who are not in conflict to instruct the same lawyer to handle their divorce or separation and related financial and children matters, greatly streamlining matters and ultimately leading to more efficient routes to agreed outcomes.

• Modern families: we often advise on cohabitation agreements, as well as dealing with cohabiting couples separating, specialising in financial remedy applications for cohabitants including Schedule 1 and TLATA. This is a niche area of family law where some firms lack expertise. We are also leaders in the area for surrogacy matters.

• Child abduction: We are members of the ICACU panel which means our team is one of the few teams in the country permitted to act for a parent whose child has been abducted from abroad to the jurisdiction of England and Wales. These matters can be extremely complex and distressing for the families involved, and our team works with experts here in England and Wales and abroad to seek to secure the safe return of the child to their home.

• We also undertake complex private children law disputes.

Our team always strives to achieve the best possible outcomes for their clients, which often involves taking a constructive and non-confrontational approach and avoiding court proceedings wherever possible.

Day to Day:

As a Solicitor, you will primarily provide support to the Partners and other senior lawyers in the team on the more complex, higher-value, and protracted matters that they are instructed on. You will also have the opportunity to progressively build your own caseload of matters that are suited to your level of experience.

This position will provide you with an excellent opportunity for further professional development under the mentorship of our highly experienced senior lawyers. Our close-knit and collaborative team will support you as you continue to build your reputation as a leading family lawyer and progress towards a position of greater responsibility in the team.

What we look for:

• A qualified Solicitor or Legal Executive with prior experience in the field of Family Law. We are looking for an individual who is used to providing support on a broad range of family issues. Candidates who are familiar with complex financial matters as well as children disputes, often with an international focus, are especially encouraged to apply.
• We do not tend to use PQE as the sole measure of experience, but we estimate that this position will suit somebody with between 0-3PQE.
• You will have experience in, or a keen interest to be involved in, marketing and business development activities.
• You will be working with a team committed to the Resolution Code of Practice and the successful candidate will work in the same way.
• You will be calm under pressure, adopt a naturally proactive approach to your work, and have the ability to adapt to changing priorities at short notice.
• We are human-first in everything we do and seek people who share this trait. You'll therefore have great communication skills, a passion for helping clients achieve their goals and the ability to think creatively.
• Whilst this position is offered full-time, we offer a split of working from home and in the office. We are a flexible team and are open to considering alternative working patterns.

If you have the required skills and experience and are keen to advance your career as part of our leading Family Team, then we strongly encourage you to apply.

If you would like to learn more about this opportunity before applying, please contact Brandon Duchesne, Talent Acquisition Manager, for an informal conversation -

Who we are

We are Moore Barlow, a top regional career law firm with a simple mission – to make a difference.

We support our clients and the communities we help through providing outstanding legal services with empathy and expertise. A full service law firm, we support these core client groups: Individuals & Families, Entrepreneurial Businesses & Organisations and Personal/Catastrophic Injury & Medical Negligence.

We are passionate about making a difference to our people, their careers and care deeply about their experience at work. Moore Barlow aims to be recognised as the best career law firm to work for. This means that we care as much about your career as you do. So whether you join us early in your career, in one of our outstanding business support functions or are continuing an already rich career in law, you'll find Moore Barlow a great place to further build your experience.

With numerous top-tier rankings in law, exceptional quality of work and named a Times Top 100 best law firm to work for, we have big plans. We are seeking passionate, human-focused individuals like you as we continue to grow. With over 450 dedicated professionals including 70 Partners and 272 Lawyers, Moore Barlow offers substantial opportunity for further advancement and personal development.

What we can offer

Our culture is open, diverse and inclusive and we look for likeminded individuals who recognise that it's this individuality that allows us to be truly different to other firms. Everything we do is underpinned by the Moore Barlow Way, which is a set of values and principles to ensure consistency of experience no matter which team you work within.

As a true career firm, we seek to reward the great work our people undertake with continued personal development opportunities. We have big plans for growth, and we see that this creates extensive opportunity for our people as we move towards our long-term ambitions.

In most of our roles, we are also open to supporting hybrid, flexible working and different work patterns. What you do outside of work is as important as your time inside of work – and we want to strike the right balance for both the individual and the firm.

We also offer great benefits including 28 days' annual leave, private medical insurance, income protection, life assurance, firmwide bonus scheme and a generous pension scheme.

If you're seeking to join a firm that seeks to provide a personal and highly engaging place to work – we are confident that you'll find this at Moore Barlow.

Our values

Human

first

Stronger

together

Lead the

way

Make it

happen