Bloomsbury Professional Celebrates 25 Years of Hershman and McFarlane: Children Law and Practice and Launches Family Law Online Service

Richard Powell10 November 2016, 05:25 UTC 2 min read

Multi-award-winning Bloomsbury Professional*, the UK’s largest independent legal publisher, is commemorating the 25th anniversary of the definitive text Hershman and McFarlane: Children Law and Practice. At the same time, it is launching its family law online service Bloomsbury Family Law.

Hershman and McFarlane: Children Law and Practice was first published in 1991. The authors, the late David Hershman QC and Sir Andrew McFarlane, were then barristers in chambers at Two Fountain Court, Birmingham. The work was conceived and written around the Children Act 1989 and was published on the day the Act came into force in October 1991. It rapidly became the leading reference on the subject and remains the go-to text thanks to its user-friendly approach and regular updating, which focuses on the key issues in both public and private law matters. In 2007, Sir Andrew was joined by Madeleine Reardon of 1 King’s Bench Walk barristers’ chambers. They continue to update the work, advised by specialist consultant editors, to ensure that it remains firmly established as the leading reference work on the subject.

In 2016, Bloomsbury Professional acquired Hershman and McFarlane: Children Law and Practice, along with five other highly regarded family law titles, from Jordan Publishing and LexisNexis. These titles form the basis of the Bloomsbury Family Law portfolio**, which is now available as an online service as part of Bloomsbury Law Online. Customers can subscribe to Bloomsbury Family Law for just £100 per month including VAT.

Bloomsbury Family Law will soon publish an additional title – Financial Abuse of Older Clients: Law, Practice and Prevention by Ann Stanyer. Further titles will be published in due course.

Family law is known to be a fast-evolving area of law. This year is particularly significant for family lawyers in Wales since it marks the replacement of sections 20-30 of the Children Act 1989 with Part 6 of the Social Services and Well-being Act 2014.

“Bloomsbury Professional wants to support the legal profession and social services by providing high-quality and fairly priced content that is convenient to access,” said Greg Kilminster, Managing Director, Bloomsbury Professional. “We believe we have achieved this by making Hershman and McFarlane: Children Law and Practice and other authoritative titles available onlinewith Bloomsbury Family Law.”

Bloomsbury Professional is a cutting-edge 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 on British Nationality Law and Clinical Negligence.

Bloomsbury Professional has won several industry awards including: