Stephen M Butler

Qualified in 1977 and has been a general legal practitioner ever since. The most important work has been with families but is also experienced in all aspects of typical "high street" legal work. Here is a brief biography based on a speech made in October 2007:

"I am a "family solicitor" which has two meanings. You know what the family doctor is; well I'm the same - I'm a GP - a General Practitioner. But like GP's I have a personal specialism - I specialise in family law - which actually means "family breakdown law."

The reason you should come to me is because I am very experienced.

I am a businessman who has had the usual ups and downs of any businessman. Here is my business history. 32 years ago I started work in the very centre of Bradford. I had two years training. Then I started a partnership with an excellent lawyer but he kicked me out after 3 years taking my car keys so I had to borrow a Morris Minor Clubman. Within weeks I set up in opposition to my ex-partner three doors up the street from my old office. I took over the practice of a blind solicitor in 1984. My practice grew and at one stage I employed 17 staff. In 1996 I went into partnership with another larger firm and that lasted all of 6 months. I left because I realised we were going bust - three years later they collapsed but I went from strength to strength. In 1999 I took a partner, Robert Kandler. He's still a partner. I left Bradford in 2001 and have worked from home since then with great success.

I have had thousands of clients and done thousands of jobs. All sorts of work. Divorce, County Court, High Court, conveyancing, wills, cases involving children, long and short trials, immigration, employment, probates, Court of Protection, rapists, thieves and other vagabonds. Bad people and good people; millionaires and paupers; old people and young people; my oldest client was 103 and I actually started work for my youngest client before he was even born, preventing social services from taking him from his mother at birth.

Just to show you how varied my work has been, how much experience I have, I have chosen a day at random - Monday 25th October 1999. Here is the diary for that year and here are the entries.

I usually arrived at the office about 8.15 and I'd do some dictation and prepare for seeing clients. My first client this day was Miss A who saw me at 11am. She was the daughter of a man who died suddenly in his early 50's without a will, leaving a business, a widow and three very bright children. She was seeing me about the estate and especially how to make sure that they didn't have to sell the house and wondering what to do about the business. Eventually, we sorted everything out - we sold the business and the mother kept the house.

At 12 noon I had to see a young woman - I'll call her Jane - about some care proceedings. She was only just 18 and her baby, born in August, had been taken off her by social services. Jane had been adopted when she was a baby because her mother was hopeless but the adoption hadn't worked out. She ended up a prostitute and she had found her way back to her natural mother when she was a teenager. They took the baby off her because she refused to leave her hopeless mother's house. My job was to get the kid back. This was one of my successes and the case ended in March 2000 with the baby back with my client.

At 1.30 I saw another client about an injunction against her brother. He was a drug addict and had attacked her in her garden, trying to bite her. He had then accused her of harassment! My job there was to advise her what to do next and like many of these domestic incidents, it came to nothing.

At 3.30 I saw a client about the houses she was selling and buying. A very competent single mother, part of a large family for which I have done a lot of work.

At 4.30 I saw a man who was coming to collect his compensation cheque. He had injured his big toe at work and we got him almost £4,500 in compensation.

So you will see that like any GP I deal with all the problems which a client may have. Now I'm in Ilkley I don't see the wide range of work I had in Bradford but whenever I see a client here I bring to the case all that experience gained in the past.

I want to tell you about a recent day - Thursday 4th October 2008. I was working away and at lunchtime I got a call from an old barrister friend. His son-in-law was desperate because he had made a bad investment. He needed immediate action and I rushed round to his house. He had paid over £25,000 to buy some land off-plan in Spain and had decided it was too risky but the deadline was Friday lunchtime. I read all the papers and managed to find a way out of it, recovering the whole of the money, almost literally at the last minute.

Later that afternoon another client turned up unexpectedly. He was the son of my first ever secretary from over 25 years ago and I have known him since he was about two. I had recently given him some advice on the telephone about how to deal with a creditor who was trying to claim more than he was entitled to. He had brought me a bottle of champagne and a thank you card.

Then I went to see another old client, an old lady who wanted to make a Lasting Power of Attorney appointing someone to authorise turning off the life support machine if she ever ended up in hospital.

So from the cradle to the grave, I have dealt with thousands of clients.

The work I most want to do now is get more and more family breakdown cases. Why do I want them? Because I want to have the chance to make their family breakdown as easy and painless as possible. The trauma of the breakdown will never be a good experience for the client but by coming to me they will have the benefit of my knowhow and years of practical experience. You might ask why I like this sort of work, dealing with clients at a horrible emotional time in their lives. It is because I help them to take their mind off the emotional problems and to concentrate on practical solutions and how best to achieve their aims. Once I have solved the practical problems for them it is easier for the client to cope with the emotional problems.

Why does having over 25 years experience matter? - because it has made me good at solving legal problems in a practical way.