Boardman, Hawkins & Osborne

Family Law

Emily Boardman is a solicitor and one of the founding partners at Boardman, Hawkins & Osborne LLP.

Emily undertakes any complex family cases involving children but specialises particularly in cases against social services and private adoptions. She advises fostering and adoption agencies as well.

She was rated one of the Top 50 Influential Women in Business by Cotswold Life and was shortlisted by Oxfordshire Business Awards in the category of Young Business Person of the Year 2013. She won Employer of the Year 2014 at the Venus Awards 2014.

She studied law at The University of London (SOAS) and obtained her professional qualifications from The College of Law (London). She trained in London and spent 12 years as the head of the family department in another Thames Valley firm before leaving to establish BH&O LLP.

In 2024 Emily has had a number of reported cases.

She represents an adoptive mother who applied to revoke an adoption order in the High Court https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2024/1059.html  and then appealed to the Court of Appeal [link to follow]. She wrote about this case here:  https://www.bholegal.co.uk/revocation-of-adoption-orders/

She has represented a mother in two sets of reported https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWFC/OJ/2024/303.html and https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWFC/OJ/2024/302.html  care proceedings brought as a result of a number of serious injuries suffered by her young child. She represented a ftah in care proceedings when his young children were identified to have fractures  https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWFC/OJ/2024/247.html]

Emily represented a great-aunt in a successful appeal in the Court of Appeal against a Placement and Care Order for her great-nephew. The great-aunt was also successful in obtaining costs against the Local Authority as a result of their conduct of the case. The case was reported and Emily wrote about it for the BH&O website and for The Transparency Project.

She represented the Mother in the appeal brought by Louise Tickle (a freelance journalist) and the BBC against a Reporting Restriction Order in the reported case of Re R [2019] EWCA 482 Civ (15 February 2019). Emily wrote about the case here and was featured in The Law Society Gazette speaking about it.

Emily has written two published articles on challenging interim threshold as a consequence of two successful challenges in Re C (permission to withdraw: medical evidence: interim threshold not crossed) [2018] EWFC B37 and Re G (interim threshold) [2017] EWFC B34.

She is the Solicitor referred to by EP in Case for legal aid – from a desperate young mother and represented the Father referred to in ‘It was a routine hospital visit. Baby Maddy wasn’t putting on weight… What happens when the state takes your child away?

English

Emily is a member of the Association of Lawyers for Children and The Law Society’s Children Panel.