Family lawyers deal with a diverse range of legal issues relating to marriage, civil partnerships and unmarried couples, including pre and post-nuptial/civil partnership agreements, separation, divorce, financial claims and cohabitation. They also handle work relating to children, including financial provision for children, contact and adoption. Family lawyers are litigators, but often negotiate settlements out of court too. Some family law cases involve substantial assets and complex financial arrangements, or high-profile disputes between well-known personalities.

Family law is a people-focused area of law. While the role of a family law solicitor calls for an astute legal mind, good communication skills are also needed to support clients through difficult periods in their lives.

Ayla Dogruyol always had ambitions to work in a professional capacity in the City, so after completing a politics degree at Edinburgh University, she studied the PgDL and LPC at BPP in London and spent a year as a paralegal with another firm, before taking up a traineeship with Charles Russell - which has a well-earned reputation in family law.

By the time she began her first seat, Ayla was eager to put the theory she had learned into practice, having found the lack of real practical work at law school slightly frustrating. Fortunately, her training contract allowed her to do just that.

"Charles Russell is a very inclusive firm," she says. "As trainees, you are involved in real work right from the word go. Also, as this is a medium-sized, cross-sector City practice, with a strong private client history, I had the option of doing seats in a more diverse range of areas than I would have had I trained at an exclusively corporate firm, which suited me perfectly as I didn't know what area of law I wanted to specialise in." It was discussions with fellow trainees that led Ayla into family law: "After speaking to trainees who had done family in their first and second seats, I decided it was an area I was also interested in. So I came to family in my third seat and, within about three weeks of being in the job, I absolutely loved it and knew it was what I wanted to do."

The work itself requires a certain type of solicitor, in that it involves highly emotive areas that rarely feature in the corporate world; and although it might at first seem limited in scope, there is much more to the work of a family lawyer than meets the eye. "Essentially, it falls into the three main areas of divorce, money and children," explains Ayla. "The work is really varied. In addition to divorce and financial matters, we also act for clients who want to move abroad with their children when the other parent doesn't agree to the move; and there are a huge number of other disputes that we become involved in relating to the child's upbringing, where the parents are unable to agree on what is best for the child. We also act for unmarried individuals whose finances become intertwined during the relationship - if that relationship breaks down, complex issues can arise over how the assets are to be shared. Increasingly, we are also being asked to draft pre and post-nuptial agreements."

Ayla points out that managing these distinct areas requires a diverse toolbox of abilities: "Handling children issues requires quite a different skill set from negotiating financial deals, where you have to be switched on to understanding the complexities of the parties' financial situations and considering how the assets can be shared between the parties - not always easy when, for example, the assets may be tied up in a business or held by an offshore trust. Much of the work we do covers a broad cross-section of clients, from multimillionaires down to the more ‘normal' end of the spectrum. So some cases involve assets based all over the world, while others may have one property and two income streams. Cases can get particularly complicated when there is a non-disclosing party and we sometimes have to instruct forensic accountants to assist in trying to identify and value the business assets."

An average day for a family solicitor can involve a mixture of client conferences - often over the telephone, as sometimes clients are based abroad - letter writing, drafting court applications, getting ready for hearings and attending court. "The week is very much a combination of client meetings, drafting solicitors' correspondence or perhaps an order following a settlement, and preparing for court," Ayla elaborates. "Today, for example, I had a long meeting with a client to discuss his financial disclosure. I'm also in the process of finalising a complicated court application for a client who is making a financial application on behalf of the parties' child and in respect of the property which was the family home, but was only registered in one of the parties' names. I probably go to court a few times a month. You're not just stuck at your desk and every day is different."

Although no two firms offer the same experience, Ayla suggests that at Charles Russell, trainees are guaranteed a taste of this variety, with plenty of client contact. "As a trainee, you will typically be attending meetings, taking a note of what is going on and processing or preparing the clients' financial disclosure forms, which is often on a one-on-one basis with the client," she explains. "You will also often attend court as the representative for Charles Russell with the client and the barrister. I think our trainees are very hands-on, not just there sitting in the background. You get a lot of direct client contact as a trainee, but it is always under the guidance and supervision of a partner."

She continues: "One of the particularly rewarding areas I've found is when you have difficult children cases, where one parent has been withholding contact with the child from the other, and we've helped reinstate that contact. I've had clients sending photographs to me of the happy reunion and that's pretty good; but the outcomes are not always happy and there can be disappointment on both sides. One of the important things is to remain objective and not be drawn into the difficult emotional place your client is in. We're here to advise clients as to the solutions that the law can offer them, and although you do have to offer some emotional support, that is not our role. You need to keep your professional hat on and not get too emotionally and personally involved in the case, because at the end of the day, our job is to act in our clients' best interests."

All in all, Ayla is very pleased that she decided to specialise in family law and would recommend it to others in a heartbeat.