Andrew Powell KC is widely recognised for his expertise in cases concerning children. His practice focuses on parental disputes about arrangements for children after separation, international children law including child abduction, and applications to relocate children to another country.
He has developed a niche practice where there is an interplay with fertility law and human rights. He has expertise in complex cases concerning international movement of children and recognition of legal parentage arising from surrogacy arrangements, assisted reproduction, donor conception and adoption. His cases often involve multiple jurisdictions, where the legal and parental status of the child is ambiguous, or where case law is still developing or is otherwise uncertain (e.g. administration of puberty blockers to transgender young people, posthumous use of gametes, legal recognition of deceased individuals).
What was your career path to your current role?
As a child, I wanted to be a paediatrician. My mum was a nurse, and having seen how hard junior doctors had to work, she rather put me off! I always enjoyed arts subjects, particularly English and history, so law felt like a natural alternative. I went on to study anthropology at university, where I developed an interest in how the law recognised – or failed to recognise – different family structures. That interest has remained a thread throughout my career. I started pupillage at 4PB in October 2008 and have never looked back. Since then, I’ve been fortunate to build a practice spanning some of the most challenging and interesting areas of family law, culminating in my recent appointment as King’s Counsel.
Did you have any other career ambitions?
Having recently been appointed King’s Counsel, my immediate focus is on continuing to develop my practice and taking on new challenges. I’m particularly interested in cases that push the boundaries of family law and raise important questions about how the law responds to the changing nature of families.
I’m also keen to encourage and support people from underrepresented backgrounds to consider a career at the Bar. The profession has made progress, but there is still work to do to ensure that talent and potential are not limited by background or circumstance.
What keeps you motivated in your work?
Many of my cases involve novel points of law that require existing legal principles to be tested, developed or applied in new ways. They often have unusual factual backgrounds, which means there is rarely a straightforward answer.
What motivates me is the intellectual challenge of working through that complexity: identifying the real legal issue, finding a solution and advancing arguments that may help shape the law beyond the individual case.
There is also a very human dimension to the work. Behind the legal arguments are people whose lives may be profoundly affected by the outcome. Being able to combine intellectual challenge with the opportunity to make a meaningful difference is what keeps me engaged.
What has been the best development in family law in the last 20 years?
The recognition of the rights of gay and lesbian people to form families and acquire legal status has been one of the most significant developments. As recently as the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, gay and lesbian parents could face losing their children because of assumptions and prejudices about their sexuality.
The Adoption and Children Act 2002 enabled same-sex couples to adopt jointly; the Civil Partnership Act 2004 and Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 extended recognition of same-sex relationships; and the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 expanded recognition of same-sex parents using artificial insemination and access to parental orders following surrogacy.
Together, these reforms have transformed the legal landscape and enabled many more people to build families with legal recognition and security. There is, of course, more to do, but I think the shift away from treating heterosexuality or biology as a prerequisite for legitimate family life is an important achievement, both legally and socially.
And the worst?
The chronic underfunding of the family justice system has had a profound and lasting impact on many people, often the most vulnerable . Delays in proceedings can leave children and families in limbo for months or even years, often at precisely the point when they most need certainty and stability. Insufficient resources place enormous pressure on judges, court staff, lawyers and the other professionals involved in the system. They also risk creating a two-tier system in which access to effective representation and timely justice depends increasingly on a person’s financial means.
If you could bring in one new piece of legislation for the sector, what would it be and why?
I would overhaul the law governing birth registration and legal parenthood to reflect the reality of modern families. Our current system is largely built around the assumption that a child has two legal parents, designated as mother and father, and struggles to accommodate families formed through assisted reproduction and other arrangements.
The system should be capable of recognising more than two legal parents where appropriate, but with greater flexibility in birth registration, including the option of recording a parent as “parent” rather than insisting on the labels “mother” or “father”.
I think it is important to emphasise that this should not mean abandoning the importance of recording the circumstances of a child’s birth. Rather, it would distinguish the factual record of who gave birth from the separate legal question of who is a child’s parent. The law should provide clarity and security for children while recognising the diversity of the families in which they grow up. Reform would also need appropriate safeguards to ensure that any additional legal parenthood is in the child’s best interests.
What piece of legislation would you take off the statute books and why?
I would amend section 67 of the Adoption and Children Act 2002, which provides that an adopted child is to be treated in law as if born to their adoptive parent(s).
Adoption necessarily creates a new legal relationship between a child and their adoptive family. But I question whether that requires the law to construct a legal fiction that the child was born to people who did not, in fact, give birth to them. Adoption should establish a child’s legal parenthood and secure their place within their new family without requiring the law to rewrite their origins.
I would favour a framework in which the adoption order itself establishes the new legal relationship from the date it is made, rather than relying on the fiction of birth to the adopters. That would preserve the transformative effect of adoption while recognising the child’s actual history and identity.
The challenge is to reconcile the security and finality that adoption provides with an honest recognition of a child’s origins. In my view, those objectives need not be mutually exclusive.
What’s the best piece of advice anyone ever gave you regarding your career?
“Aim high!” It was the motto of my state primary school in Birmingham, where I grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, and it has stayed with me ever since.
It is simple advice, but powerful. It encourages you not to limit your ambitions by what you think is achievable
What advice would you like to give to someone just starting out?
Be brave – but be realistic.
Be brave enough to put yourself forward for opportunities, take on challenging work and pursue the areas of law that genuinely interest you. Don’t assume that you need to tick every box before applying for something, or that a particular career path is not for you because you haven’t seen many people like yourself following it.
But be realistic, too. The Bar is demanding, competitive and not always predictable. Build your skills, seek out good mentors, listen to constructive feedback and understand that setbacks are part of the process. Success rarely happens overnight, and comparing your progress with other people’s is rarely helpful: stay in your lane.
Tell us something people may be surprised to know about you…
I learnt to swim aged 29.
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