Half a dozen lawyers from Hong Kong law firm Hampton, Winter and Glynn (HWG) – led by partners Winnie Chow and Jain Ruskin Brown – have left to form boutique family law firm CRB.

Chow and Ruskin Brown are the co-founders of the new firm. The other four solicitors are Louise Liu, Anne Salt, Martin Leong and Frances Cheng.

The firm offers a “holistic approach to client needs by providing collaborative practice, mediation and parenting co-ordination assistance, alongside more traditional family law expertise,” according to its website.

“There is an inherent need in the marketplace for a specialised family law firm and although HWG was well known for family law, it was not exclusively family law,” Chow and Ruskin Brown explained to ALB. “The idea for CRB arose from the desire to provide dedicated family law advice and alternative disputes resolution assistance.”

Asked how the new firm plans to compete with the other established family law firms, they replied: “In a sense CRB is already well established in that its partners have been working together for almost 20 years and they continue to lead the same team with whom they worked at HWG. CRB's unique advantage lies in its singular focus on providing specialist and expert advice only in the field of family law.”

Earlier this year, HWG was ranked in the second tier of leading family and divorce law firms in Hong Kong by Doyle’s Guide thanks to Chow and Ruskin Brown, the only lawyers from the firm named in the individual category of the guide.

For the next 12 months, the co-founders said their new firm will concentrate on “establishing the cohesiveness of its team and invest in the upskilling of its solicitors for the benefit of our clients.”

HWG now has only two lawyers who does family law work: partner Elaine Sum and assistant solicitor Fiona Leung, according to its website. The firm did not respond to a request for comment as of press time.