About Richard Buxton

I’m Richard Buxton, and I’m a Family lawyer and Civil & Commercial Mediator with clients in East Sheen, Richmond, Kew, Brentford, Twickenham, Putney, Barnes, Mortlake and the surrounding areas.

When I reflect on my career, I’m struck by how fortunate I’ve been, and I’m pleased with what I’ve accomplished. But not for the reasons you might think.

It’s hard to believe now, but my career has spanned five decades of working in law around the world. I’ve been a partner in a law firm in the City of London, litigated and advocated in the High Courts of London and Singapore, and have spent 25 years’ as a topflight City property lawyer.

 he journey to founding my own company

Many years ago, I started feeling uncomfortable about rapidly increasing Solicitors’ costs.

Then, having gone through a couple of divorces, I realised how brutal family law could be. I found it a tremendously difficult process and could only imagine how much worse it would have been if I had no knowledge of family law, the court system and Judges.

I decided to change my focus from Conveyancing and Property to Family law; from making money for huge companies and institutions and wealthy entrepreneurs to offering a valuable service to people going through the toughest times in their life.

And In 2012 I founded Mortlake Law & Mediation, and soon afterwards trained as a Family Mediator and then qualified as a Civil & Commercial Mediator in 2018 / 2019.

Richard Buxton founded Mortlake law in 2012 following his own expensive and acrimonious divorces (x2) using various specialist solicitors. In those days( 1990) being involved in child arrangements was even worse than it is now. For example, there was no Cafcass service and parental alienation/hostility to a father seeing his children was a complete nightmare using the then family legal system.

Richard wished to help people navigate their divorce and child arrangements positively, to improve access to justice and to avoid the emotional pain that he and his family had experienced. This drove him to investigate an alternative way of sorting out divorce and separation and child arrangements. Richard used his background with a long career as a Property Solicitor with a spell as an Advocate and Solicitor in Singapore to commence a new type of legal service.

Richard assists clients through the divorce process /child arrangements at

reasonable cost. Richard believes that he provides a valuable service to clients in respect of those divorces, for which more expensive legal advice is not necessary or desirable. Richard assists clients in their financial negotiations and negotiations involving properties and pensions. Richard helps clients to fill in the necessary forms and other court documents. Mortlake law(“M.L”) is NOT engaged in the conduct of litigation on a client’s behalf. M.L  do not go on record and therefore do not represent them-they remain litigant in person throughout. All of this is in the public interest in assisting members of the public to sort out the consequences of their divorces at proportionate cost. We make it very clear that we are not solicitors. Indeed, we make a feature of this fact to

ensure we are not involved in the conduct of litigation and insist that clients are file court documents themselves. In setting up our model Richard has been anxious to ensure that M.L. do not at any stage trespass into the reserved legal activities contained the Legal Services Act 2007 . Specifically, M.L. have taken care to ensure we are not engaged in the conduct of litigation.

Richard’s initiative has improved access to justice for many clients effectively disenfranchised from the legal process by the near total withdrawal of legal aid from private family law proceedings on 1 April 2013. M.L delivers significant social value, and our model is an example of innovative working. The clear social benefit of such a service has been praised by Mr Justice Mostyn (the most esteemed family court judge of his generation, recently retired) in his judgement JK v MK{2020} EWFC 2

Work with me and you know I’ll give you 100% of my attention, and you’ll never deal with anyone else.  You’ll also have the time and space to reflect on my advice so you can make the best decisions for yourself and your family.

Even better? My fees are way lower than my less experienced competitors, so you can keep your costs down while receiving expert help.