3PB

Family

Dr Angel Matoke-Njagi joined 3PB’s Birmingham office after successfully completing a 12-month pupillage with 3PB.

Angel is a member of 3PB’s Family Law Group and accepts instructions in all areas of family law. She has a keen interest in financial remedies and private and public children law. Angel has experience with financial remedies proceedings under the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 and the Matrimonial and Family Proceedings Act 1984, private children law disputes concerning children from first hearing dispute resolution appointments to final hearings, and family law injunctions from directions appointments to final hearings.

Angel has been commended for her client care skills, including her positive, pragmatic, reassuring manner and ability to build a rapport with clients quickly. She has experience supporting clients with a full range of cognitive abilities through difficult and upsetting cases and providing them with realistic, practical, and sensitive advice.

Angel’s interpersonal skills have enabled her to efficiently negotiate with opponents and litigants in person to ensure excellent outcomes for clients. Her experience of criminal law in pupillage, in which she secured acquittals, has enabled Angel to develop thorough and robust cross-examination skills that are an asset in contested final hearings.

In academia, Angel taught law undergraduates at the University of Warwick about the English Legal System and Constitutional and Administrative Law. Angel left academia to become a barrister after being awarded the Cassel Scholarship and BPP Pro Bono Award. The latter was awarded in recognition of her strides in volunteering and teaching. Angel volunteered for the Office of the State Public Defender in Mississippi, the Personal Support Unit, and the University of Kent's Law Clinic, among others.

Angel has drafted threshold documents, schedules of allegations, grounds of appeal, skeleton arguments on family matters, such as ToLATA, and advice on various issues, including parental alienation.

Outside work, Angel uses movement (yoga, walking, and weightlifting) to find moments of peace in a busy world.

Family 

Angel is a busy member of 3PB’s Family Law Group. She has a keen interest in all areas of family law.

Angel’s recent successes include:

• A three-year non-molestation order and findings made against a respondent following Angel’s cross-examination of him.
• Settlement at a financial dispute resolution appointment with a 78/22 division of the net proceeds of the sale of the former matrimonial home (the only property in the marriage) in favour of her client.
• Obtaining freezing orders and third-party disclosure orders in financial remedies proceedings.
• Obtaining no orders for contact (save through letterbox) at Dispute Resolution Appointments and Final Hearings.
• Persuading the tribunal that a fact-finding hearing was necessary and proportionate against CAFCASS’s recommendation due to allegations of domestic abuse.
• Obtaining live with orders and spend time with orders in line with what was sought by the applicant.
• Obtaining prohibited steps orders to prevent respondents from removing the children from the care of the applicant or an institution entrusted with the care of the children.
• Resisting an application for more contact than the parties had agreed in mediation.
• Negotiating non-molestation orders by consent for applicants, despite previous reluctance to consent from respondents.
• Acquiring an order specifying that the applicant would remain with the child’s passport and that the respondent had to inform the applicant before applying for a foreign passport.

Year of Call: 2022

Member of Lincoln’s Inn

BPTC, BPP Birmingham (Very Competent) PhD in Law, University of Warwick LLM in Human Rights Law, University of Nottingham (Merit) LLB Law (Hons), University of Kent (2:1)