A focus by Hall Brown Family Law on helping clients resolve issues away from the courtroom has been recognised in a prestigious national ranking.

Sarah Manning, Head of the firm’s Non-Court Dispute Resolution (NCDR) team has been included in the latest list of leading mediators advising high net worth clients in the UK compiled by Chambers and Partners.

She is one of only two out of a total of 39 specialists in the classification based outside London and the South East.

Ms Manning’s ranking comes just 18 months after she joined Hall Brown to spearhead the growing volume of mediation work across its five offices.

She described how it demonstrated the rapid impact which the firm’s efforts had already made.

“Even though I’m the only member of Hall Brown’s NCDR team to be included, I regard it as being recognition for an enormous collective contribution.

“Despite having provided mediation services prior to my arrival, the firm has invested considerably in personnel, training and systems to ensure that it is a resource available to clients nationwide.

“There is an appreciation among clients, the judiciary and politicians that the full range of NCDR methods, including mediation, arbitration, collaborative law and private finance dispute resolution (pFDR), is important in helping people settle their differences without the need to resort to court proceedings.

“In doing so, it also eases the strain on already overworked family courts, meaning that those cases which need to be heard before a judge can be dealt with more speedily.

“The last 12 months have illustrated how mediation is anything but static and continues to evolve to take account of clients’ needs and circumstances.

“As well as continued growth in the popularity of hybrid mediation, there has been a very notable rise in mediations involving assets in excess of £1 million.

“Given that cases of that kind of value were considered unsuitable for resolution in such a setting not too long ago, it underlines how mediation has become the norm for many family law disputes.”

The Chambers’ High Net Worth ranking success for Ms Manning and her colleagues is the latest evidence of Hall Brown’s standing as one of the UK’s top family law firms.

In April, the independent Doyle’s Guide ranking of legal specialists put Hall Brown in a class of its own for the second year in a row, naming it as the only First Tier family operator in Manchester.

Ms Manning was also singled out for inclusion in the list of leading mediators drawn up by Doyle’s, one of a handful of respected legal rankings worldwide, with a specific focus on lawyers and law firms in the UK, Middle East and Asia-Pacific regions.

That listing, in turn, followed her being named Family Mediator of the Year at the National Mediation Awards in 2024.

It also comes after Hall Brown’s completion of another clean sweep of the country’s premier legal rankings.

It was the only specialist family practice based in the North West to earn a place in the top tier of the Legal 500, Chambers and Partners, eprivateclient and Times Best 250 Law firms classifications.

Legal 500 hailed the firm as being “best in its class” with lawyers who “excel at every level”, while four of Hall Brown’s five offices also made the Chambers and Partners’ listing, with Manchester and Sheffield both being included in Band One.

In addition, the firm retained its place on a list of the UK’s 250 best law firms working across 28 legal business, public and private client disciplines published by the Times newspaper.

In doing so, it became one of only a handful of firms to have featured in the list every year since it was first compiled in 2018.