Building families—legal advice

We provide support and tailored advice for every aspect of building a family. We understand how important family is and approach every case with sensitivity and care. Children’s welfare is at the heart of everything we do.

We have experience in domestic and international family arrangements and our lawyers are specialists in children law. This means we have the expertise to help you overcome any challenge and enable you to create your family in your own way. 

Our specialists can offer advice and representation if you are creating your family in one of the following ways: 

• surrogacy (here or abroad): with the assistance of our in-house immigration and private client lawyers we are able to help with all stages of the surrogacy process
• obtaining an adoption order or if you are seeking advice about the law in relation to adoption
• obtaining a parental order 

We can also help if you are seeking advice about:

• undergoing assisted reproduction at a clinic or outside of a clinic 
• a donor conception agreement
• a dispute regarding the legal status of biological and non-biological parents 
• the law in relation to fertility treatment
• disputes about arrangements to share the care of children conceived through fertility treatment or conception agreements

We are one of few child law teams which exist separately from wider family law practice, whilst being able to work with our family colleagues if and when required. This means that we are on top of all aspects of children law and practice – it is what we do day in, day out.

• We focus on the best interests of the child at all times and our aim is to be constructive and provide solutions using our knowledge and experience. We work closely with professional experts and judges. 
• We are market leaders – Chambers and Partners legal directory ranked us highly for public children law, private children law and cross-border disputes concerning children.
• In a landmark surrogacy case we secured the first parental order establishing legal parenthood of an adult child born through a surrogacy arrangement influencing a change in law. 
• We are trained advocates who regularly represent clients in court proceedings. This means that we are there for our clients inside and outside of the courtroom.

Here are some comments made about us.

“They have a fantastic children department and continue to offer top-quality advice.”
Chambers UK (2024)

“Russell-Cooke is hugely respected in the children law space.”
Chambers UK (2024)

"Jade is conscientious with clients and understands the complexity of the cases."
Chambers UK (2024) 

Our hourly rates are competitive, offering value for money.

Charges are usually based on our hourly rates plus administrative charges and disbursements.

We offer a range of experience levels and costs so that everyone we work for has options, whilst the most experienced members of the team offer support throughout.  We will provide you with an initial estimate of your likely legal costs and will update this as your requirements or the circumstances of the work change. The current range of hourly rates for members of the team is from £200 plus VAT to £400 plus VAT per hour. We may be able to offer a fixed fee meeting. Please enquire for more details.