Katie Stephens

Introduction

Katie Stephens practises across all areas of family law, including financial remedies, TLATA, private children, and care proceedings.

In TLATA proceedings, Katie is instructed in trials, early neutral evaluations and directions hearings involving disputes between former cohabitees. She also provides advice at the pre-action stage and drafts particulars of claim and part 36 offers.

Katie regularly advises and represents clients at all stages of financial remedy proceedings, from first directions appointments and financial dispute resolution hearings to multi-day final hearings and enforcement applications. Her work includes cases involving trusts and personal injury settlements.

In private children proceedings, Katie is frequently instructed at dispute resolution appointments, fact-finding hearings and multi-day final hearings, including cases involving rule 16.4 guardians, allegations of abuse and parental influence. She has also appeared in an appeal concerning an interim contact decision. Katie also provides written advice, recently including special guardianship orders.

In care proceedings, Katie acts at all stages of hearing, from interim care order to final hearing. She has also appeared in the High Court in a deprivation of liberty case concerning secure accommodation.

Alongside her practice, Katie contributes to the Financial Remedies Journal, writing both articles and case summaries of recent judgments.

Prior to pupillage, Katie worked as a paralegal for a local authority, assisting with deprivation of liberty and care proceedings from PLO to final hearing. She also worked as a research assistant to Dr Rob George on his book, Wards of Court and the Inherent Jurisdiction (2024).

Katie was runner-up in the Young Association of Lawyers for Children Legal Advice Competition, advising on contact and parental responsibility in a sperm donor case, and won the Honourable Society of Lincoln’s Inn Debate Shield. She studied the Bar Course with scholarships from Lincoln’s Inn, the Family Law Bar Association and the Leonard Sainer Legal Education Foundation.

Katie volunteers with Bridging the Bar, an organisation that supports students becoming barristers from underrepresented groups at the bar, and mentors law students at the University of Reading and University of Nottingham.