Practice Areas
Ruth qualified as a solicitor in 1997. She has been a member of the Law Society’s Children Panel since 2005, and her legal work involves specialising in childcare work and complex children cases.
Ruth also became a family mediator in 2012 and mediates in all areas of family disputes including children and financial disputes. This allows her to use her vast experience in childcare law and child development, in her mediation practice. She is now Accredited by the Law Society in family mediation and is a trained child inclusive mediator.
In her Legal practice, Ruth specialises in acting for children, parents and family members, grandparents and aunts and uncles in court proceedings including care proceedings, children law disputes, adoption and wardship. Ruth is able to represent children and young people in court proceedings, either with their court appointed Guardians or separately represent them where appropriate. She has recently developed a specialism in those cases involving allegations of parental alienation.
As well as being a member of the Law Society’s Children Panel, Ruth is a member of the Association of Lawyers for Children and Resolution. Ruth is also a Family Law Panel member https://thefamilylawpanel.org/ through Only Mums/Only Dads and provides assistance through that scheme and is also a regular contributor to their publications.
Ruth leads the firm’s community and charity involvement, both locally and nationally. Ruth is a Trustee of Abingdon Carousel, the Children’s Centre in Abingdon, and is a passionate advocate for community services, especially for those more vulnerable members of the community.
Ruth prides herself in acting for her clients in a humane, compassionate, sensitive way, and is well regarded for her problem-solving approach. Both as a solicitor and mediator she is keen to look for solutions.
Ruth is especially keen to use her skills and experience to develop her mediation practice and help couples and parents to find better ways of resolving the issues that arise upon separation. She has a growing reputation for enabling couples she mediates with to think creatively about solutions, and focus especially on their children’s needs, and on the future rather than the past.
Ruth takes ongoing training very seriously, and has recently undertaken the Only Mums & Dads What About Henry training, and also training in Neurodiversity and Neuro-divergency, Understanding Trauma, Talking and listening to children, and Engaging with Fathers. More crucially, she has encouraged the rest of her colleagues to undertake this training, so that the majority of the family team at BH&O have done the What about Henry training as well.
Ruth is also interested in developing the firm’s modern families offering so alongside child arrangements, adoption and SGOs the firm are also able to advise on surrogacy arrangements.
Career
Ruth trained at a firm in Wiltshire, but subsequently worked at firms in south Oxfordshire before moving to Oxford firms where she met Emily and Irena. The idea to set up a specialist family law firm was formed, and the partners have been running BH&O since September 2018.
Since very early on in her career, Ruth has specialised in Family Law, and for most of that time, specialised in the law relating to Children, including care proceedings and public law matters.
