Multi-award-winning Bloomsbury Professional, the UK’s largest independent legal publisher, now publishes some of the most highly regarded family law titles in England and Wales.
Bloomsbury Professional is ideally positioned to firmly establish itself in the Family Law market with this portfolio of six well-known works acquired from Jordans and LexisNexis. The six titles are:
- Hershman and McFarlane: Children Law and Practice – in loose leaf and online
- Duckworth: Matrimonial Property and Finance – in loose leaf and online
- Family Court Reports
- Child Care and Adoption Law: A Practical Guide
- A Practical Guide to Family Proceedings
- Hershman and McFarlane: Children Act Handbook
On 22nd July 2016 Bloomsbury Professional takes sole responsibility for the six titles acquired on 22nd January 2016, after the Competition and Markets Authority identified competition concerns around the proposed takeover of Jordans by LexisNexis. LexisNexis previously published the Family Court Reports while Jordans published the other five titles.
The six prestigious titles are written by leading members of the judiciary and leading family law practitioners in England and Wales. Hershman and McFarlane: Children: Law and Practice, “ the practitioner’s ‘Bible’ on all aspects of public and private child law”, is written by The Rt Hon Lord Justice McFarlane and Madeleine Reardon. Matrimonial Property and Finance , “the leading text in the area”, is written by Peter Duckworth while the Family Court Reports areproduced under the guidance of the esteemed Editorial Board of The Rt Hon Sir Mathew Thorpe, The Hon Mr Justice Mostyn and Deepak Nagpal.
The portfolio will be enhanced to offer subscribers an excellent online service. With fair and competitively priced content, customers will benefit from being able to save money by picking and choosing the individual titles they value most rather than having to pay for fixed packages. Within six months, a fully comprehensive online family law service will be available, as part of Bloomsbury Professional’s broader online offering, with Scottish and Irish online customers able to choose the family law service as an add-on module.
The acquisition of these six well-established family law titles enables Bloomsbury to extend its strong legal portfolio, which already covers company law, criminal law and employment law among other topic areas.
“Bloomsbury Professional is committed to offering fair and competitively priced content to our legal customers,” says Martin Casimir, Managing Director of Bloomsbury Professional. “As we have shown in the past, we are prepared to slay giants to achieve this. Over the last few years, our Criminal Practice Series has successfully disrupted the market dominance of expensive tomesby offering standalone, practical volumes at an affordable price.
“Now we are applying a similar strategy to family law, where we will give customers the option to purchase separate titles that cover specific areas of interest to them, rather than pricier bundles that include irrelevant content.
“We are delighted to increase our profile as a competitive provider of family law content with our acquisition of this list of six titles, which includes texts regarded as leading authorities in their area.”
Bloomsbury Professional is a publisher of high-quality books and information services for lawyers, accountants and business professionals. Its strategy is to work with great authors to provide excellent content at affordable prices, in the formats that its customers need.
Founded after Bloomsbury Publishing plc bought professional publisher Tottel in 2009, Bloomsbury Professional has steadily grown in terms of commercial success, size and range of products. Among the legal titles it publishes are The Law and Practice Relating to Charities, Fransman’s British Nationality Law and Clinical Negligence.
Bloomsbury Professional has won several industry awards including:
- The Independent Publishers Guild (IPG) Independent Publisher of the Year 2013
- Frankfurt Book Fair Academic & Professional Publisher of the Year 2013
- Bookseller Industry Awards 2013: Winner – Academic, Educational & Professional
- Biographies of some of the Bloomsbury Professional Family Law series authors
Peter Duckworth (Matrimonial Property and Finance)
Peter Duckworth is a leading family law barrister at 29 Bedford Row Chambers. He specialises in matrimonial finance, with a focus on high-net-worth divorces (£5m – £50m), typically where a business is involved. He was called to the Bar in 1971, becoming a member of Middle Temple and Lincoln’s Inn. Duckworth has been described as a “fantastic reservoir of knowledge about family finance”.
Sir Andrew McFarlane (Hershman and McFarlane: Children Law and Practice, Hershman and McFarlane: Children Act Handbook 2016/17 and Child Care and Adoption Law)
Sir Andrew McFarlane was appointed as a Lord Justice of Appeal in July 2011 and now sits full time in the Court of Appeal in London. In April 2005, he was appointed to the High Court, Family Division and was the Family Division Liaison Judge for the Midland Circuit for five years. He was the legal representative of the government’s Family Justice Review Panel. As Queen’s Counsel, Sir Andrew appeared at all levels of court including the House of Lords and the European Court of Human Rights.
Madeleine Reardon (Hershman and McFarlane: Children: Law and Practice (update editor) and Child Care and Adoption Law)
Madeleine Reardon is a barrister at 1 King’s Bench Walk. She maintains a wide and versatile family law practice covering all aspects of children work, both public and private, financial remedy proceedings and applications under Schedule 1 to the Children Act 1989. She has been a recommended junior in both Chambers & Partners and the Legal 500 for several years. Currently, she is ranked in ‘Tier 1’ of the Legal 500 and ‘Tier 2’ of Chambers and Partners.
Sir Mathew Thorpe (Family Court Reports – Journal)
The Rt. Hon. Sir Mathew Thorpe is a former Lord Justice of Appeal, Vice-President of the Family Division and the first Head of International Family Law. He is one of the country’s experts on divorce, parenting and the breakdown of marriage. Sir Mathew has given judgment in some of the most significant family cases in recent years. He caused debate over whether the law discriminates against fathers when he refused a househusband leave to appeal against a High Court order that granted the man’s wife custody of their children.
