Spear’s Review

For Luke Scarratt, the doors to family law were opened by the esteemed Baroness Fiona Shackleton. ‘I started at Payne Hicks Beach as a trainee and was really lucky to be asked by Fiona to have a place in her team,’ he tells Spear’s. 

The amiable lawyer has since worked with Baroness Shackleton on a number of big-money cases, the most significant of which was the high-profile divorce between Princess Haya and Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum.

‘One of the things I love about family law is that suddenly you have to become well versed on a very idiosyncratic thing,’ he recalls, referring to the complex hacking allegations that came to the fore during the case. ‘I was asked to be on the case when I was just an associate, so it was valuable having a front-row seat.’

Scarratt acknowledges that Payne Hicks Beach’s reach and capabilities have allowed him to work with a diverse set of HNWs. ‘It’s interesting to hear human stories from all sorts of people who lead slightly weird and wonderful lives.’