Rachel Francis

Family law

Rachel maintains an extensive practice in public and private law family, domestic abuse and financial remedy proceedings. She represents parents and children, at all levels and in appeals. She acts in cases involving allegations of sexual abuse, emotional abuse, non-accidental injury and those involving complex immigration issues, including trafficking, asylum and age-disputed children.

Rachel regularly advises on nationality and immigration issues for parents, children and kinship carers, and accepts instructions as an immigration law expert in family proceedings.

Immigration law

Rachel has a busy immigration practice. She represents appellants and claimants in a broad range of cases, at all levels. She has extensive experience in asylum and complex refugee family reunion cases. She has developed a strong judicial review practice, regularly advising and acting for Looked After Children and care leavers in nationality and leave to remain cases.

Rachel has considerable expertise advising on the disclosure of documents from family proceedings into immigration proceedings and on family law issues that may arise in immigration cases, and accepts instructions in this area.

Training

Rachel regularly delivers training on immigration and family law matters. She has written extensively on intersecting family and immigration law issues. Her journal article, ‘Immigration issues in children law proceedings’ January [2020] Fam Law 88, on the intersection between these two practice areas, was endorsed by the Court of Appeal in A (A Child) (Rev 1) [2020] EWCA Civ 731 (15 June 2020)(§35).

Alongside her practice at the bar, Rachel is the co-director of Claiming Space, a Community Interest Company she co-founded in 2017 to provide support, and training for practitioners working with vulnerable populations. In 2021 Rachel co-authored the best-selling practitioner text, Vicarious Trauma in the Legal Profession: a practical guide to trauma, burnout and collective care, which outsold all other books released by its publisher, LAG, in its first year of sale. Rachel has spoken widely at conferences, on national radio, international podcasts, and in print media, about vicarious trauma and its impact on practitioners.