People are often at their lowest when they meet Christine Plews.

As one of Oxford’s top family lawyers, she has a front-row seat to the fall-out caused by divorce and custody battles.

“We see people in a really bad place but although the system comes in for a lot of stick, they gain in confidence as things progress and we negotiate a settlement,” she said.

“They start to think ‘I can plan for the future’ and you see their heads go up.”

From these rather unpromising beginnings, clients often turn into friends.

“The majority of people don’t want you to be their friend or counsellor, they want you to do a particular job.

“But some cases take a year and lots of clients have gone on to become friends.

“I still go out to dinner with some clients but always ask: ‘Do you really want to see me?’”

As a partner and head of the family practice group and private client team for Blake Lapthorn, one of the UK’s biggest law firms, the 49-year-old mother-of-two oversees teams in Oxford, Southampton and London from a glossy office on the third floor of Botley’s Seacourt Tower.

She has extensive experience in collaborative law, where couples still each have a lawyer but work things out face-to-face with the aim of avoiding court.

“With collaboration, people feel they have more control because in court, you are handing over to a judge.

“The trouble is, unlike with money where you can find the middle ground, with children you can’t divide them in two.

“We always have to have at heart what is in the best interests of the child and that is what you focus on.

“It’s difficult when clients or other solicitors want to use bullyboy tactics because it increases the costs and causes more bad feeling.”

She has spent almost all her working life in Oxford, first at Linnells then Blake Lapthorn, after intial training with Reading-based solicitors’ firm Brain & Brain.

All through her history degree at Nottingham University, she was unsure what career to follow and virtually fell into law.

“I loved all the arguments and evidence-based part of my course but realised I had to move from Henry VIII on to real people and earn a living from it, “ she said.

Ms Plews said that one of the hardest parts of her job is breaking bad news to clients, citing the example of a man fighting for custody of a child, who lost his case.

“It’s the equivalent of the doctor giving you bad news.

“But if people have been involved in the process all the way and you haven’t taken over, then they are usually OK with that,” she added.