Clerking team

Gail Whelan

Assistant Senior & Family Clerk

David Harrald

Family Clerk

Elisa Clement

Family Clerk

Rhian is an experienced, specialist family law practitioner whose practice encompasses all non-financial aspects of family law.

Rhian read Law at Warwick University and was called to the Bar by Gray’s Inn in July 2000.

Children (Public and Private law)

Rhian undertakes all types of public and private law cases and has extensive experience acting for local authorities, parents, other lay parties and guardians.

Rhian is well known to colleagues and tribunals alike as a conscientious barrister with excellent command of her papers and meticulous attention to detail who has a personable yet straightforward approach that is appreciated by professional and lay clients in equal measure.

Rhian conducts a broad spectrum of public law work at all levels including complex cases for example, those involving non-accidental injury, incest, oral evidence from child witnesses about sexual abuse and applications for injunctive relief.

With regards to private law matters Rhian is instructed in more complicated cases, for example, those involving serious physical or sexual abuse allegations, a foreign element, parent alienation and implacable hostility, local authority involvement or those that have a novel/unusual factual matrix.

Rhian has a reputation for approaching all of her cases with tenacity and will leave no stone unturned in the pursuit of her clients’ best interests.

Cases

YW (A Child) (Adequacy of Reasons) [2021] EWCA Civ 1174
Rhian acted for a second local authority supporting an appeal to the Court of Appeal against findings of fact of non accidental facial injuries to a toddler. The appeals were allowed. The CoA concluded amongst other things “It was in my judgment wrong of the judge as she went through the evidence of each witness to provide a running commentary on its credibility. She ought to have set out the accounts and only reached her conclusions once she had considered the totality of the evidence.” The case was reported on BAILLII.

Memberships

  • Northern Circuit
  • Family Law Bar Association