Meet Cathy Sousa

Cathy Sousa

Cathy specialises in all forms of Non-Court Dispute Resolution and will help clients understand and manage the potential long-term financial and emotional consequences of decisions at an early stage, fully exploring all of the non-court options from the first client meeting, with clear and direct advice delivered in a sensitive and compassionate way.   Cathy often works with Family Consultants and Financial advisers from the outset in a team based approach and she was a founder member of the multidisciplinary Hampshire Family Legal Solutions POD (www.hfls.co.uk), which was set up over 10 years ago to be dedicated to ensuring families always have access to the legal, emotional and financial support they need from the outset.

Cathy qualified as a Family Solicitor over 20 years ago and later established her own specialist Family Law firm in Hampshire in 2009. Cathy is a trained Collaborative Solicitor, Family Mediator, Resolution Together Specialist and Arbitrator. She is a member of IFLA (The Institute of Family Law Arbitrators) dealing with both financial remedy and child matters and can also undertake neutral evaluations and private FDRs. Cathy is also accredited as a Family Law specialist, Family Mediator and Criminal litigator with the Law Society.  She has extensive experience of working with families where there are allegations of domestic abuse and child abuse and where there are safeguarding issues, having previously specialised in care and criminal proceedings.

Cathy is co-chair of the Resolution Collaborative Working Party and is committed to supporting and training Collaborative PODs nationally.  She writes and delivers training personally and for Resolution on the topics of Collaborative Law, interdisciplinary working models and first meeting training.  Cathy has lived in Australia, Italy and Portugal over the years and has experience of other European legal jurisdictions, having undertaken Legal training at the University of Modena, Italy and the University of Adelaide, Australia.  Cathy is a member of the IACP (International Academy of Collaborative Alliance).