Manchester Legal Awards: Family lawyer who campaigned for no-fault divorce wins lifetime honour

A family lawyer who helped lead a campaign to introduce no fault divorces in England and Wales has been honoured for his lifetime's work at the North's biggest legal awards.

Nigel Shepherd, of Mills & Reeve, was last night presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Manchester Legal Awards.

Hundreds of members of the North West legal community gathered at the Midland Hotel for the black tie event to honour colleagues working in fields from criminal law to family and employment law.

Mr Shepherd was a popular winner of the Lifetime Achievement title, which honours individuals who have had "an unrivalled impact and lasting contribution to the legal services market in the region during their lifetime".

READ MORE: THG to gift shares to 500 employees as long as targets are achieved

Other winners included Brabners, Eversheds Sutherland and DWF.

Mr Shepherd was twice the national chairman of Resolution, the national association of famiy justice professionals, where he helped push for vital legal reforms.

In their citation for Mr Shepherd last night, the awards judges said: "Reforming divorce law has been a professional and personal mission for most of his career. In his first stint as chair, he led Resolution through the highly charged political debate that resulted in the Family Law Act 1996, which would have introduced no fault divorce but was never implemented."

Resolution at that time had just one staff member - so Mr Shepherd persuaded members to fund lobbying and PR support through a levy on top of the membership fee.

The judges said: "As a result, the organisation was able to punch well above its weight and make a significant contribution to the passage of the legislation. It also represented a step change in the organisation’s profile and influence.

"Nigel accepted the invitation to become chair again primarily because he and Resolution saw no fault divorce, and other key issues of law reform, as unfinished business. In his last two-year term at Resolution, he continued to promote the arguments and be the key spokesperson for change through the print and broadcast media, briefings with politicians, communications with members and through his membership of the advisory board supporting Professor Liz Trinder’s Finding Fault research."

In 2018 Mills & Reeve successfully applied for Resolution to intervene in the widely reported Supreme Court proceedings of Owens v Owens, which revolved around the interpretation of so-called "unreasonable behaviour".

While Mrs Owens did not get her divorce, the case was a catalyst for change as the Supreme Court called on Parliament to take action. As a result the Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Act 2020 - which removes fault from the divorce process - was passed and was implented on April 6 this year.

Legal scholar Professor Liz Trinder has said: “During his two stints as national chair of Resolution, Nigel has been an absolutely tireless campaigner to support the development of both good family law practice and good family law. He has done so with good humour, endless enthusiasm and passion. I can’t think of anyone who has done more to try to secure divorce law reform in this country."

Mr Shepherd said: "I came up for what was then Manchester Polytechnic in 1975,did my degree, met my wife in the first term, and we liked it here so we stayed. Most of my life has been here, compared to being in the south where I was born.

"Since then I have seen the industry change phenomenally, the profession is really different now. I mean, I started off in a very small two partner firm doing my training in Gately, then I moved to a well known firm called Slater Heelis, and I did all kinds of litigation work.

"I did criminal work, family, commercial litigation, I did some prosecuting for the department of social security. So, I’ve always done family, I started to do more and more of it and in the end I ended up specialising entirely in family law.

"I started specialising in family law work increasingly and then I moved to do nothing but family law when I came into the city centre in 1993, and I’ve stayed since.

"I’ve always had an affinity with family law and I really enjoy the work. I started to not enjoy the criminal work as much as I had done in the early days.

"It became more difficult, the legal aid situation became more difficult. I still thoroughly enjoyed the court work, but I gravitated towards doing more and more family and then I got this opportunity to become a partner in a city centre firm so I took that and that was it.

"I've always been heavily involved in the national family justice group called Resolution. I became a member of that in the mid 80’s. It was founded in 1982 - so early days.

"I was involved in the original steering committee in Manchester to get the regional group set up and then I became one of the early regional chairs of Resolution.

"Then I stood for their national committee, which is like their board, and got onto that, and then I eventually worked my way up becoming national chair in the mid 90’s.

"I was heavily involved in that. I led the organisation through a campaign for ‘no fault divorce’, and that was in the mid 90s. We got the legislation, but it was never implemented. So I remained on the board of Resolution and still committed to trying to get this big change in the law through and I accepted the invitation to become national chair again in 2016 - the only person to have done it twice.

"I did it very much because I saw ‘no fault divorce’ as unfinished business and we felt that we could get it through. We carried on the campaigning and eventually we got the ‘no fault divorce’ legislation passed in 2020 an