Irena Osborne

Irena Osborne is an experienced family practitioner. Before becoming a founding partner of BH&O Irena worked in the care department at Turpin & Miller LLP for 8 years, having trained in a large firm in London and spent some time in a high street firm in Buckinghamshire. She spent three years in the Oxford office before moving to the Reading office taking over running it. She has eight years post qualification experience representing parents in care proceedings and dealing with international family matters. She has further four years pre-qualification experience dealing with family litigation in general.

Irena’s notable cases include:

Irena regularly undertakes work including clients of foreign nationalities and clients based abroad involved in care proceedings, relocation cases, abduction cases and other family cases with international element. She is a member of the Family Law Advanced Panel (Abduction & Wardship), member of Resolution, Association of Lawyers for Children and Child Abduction Lawyers’ Association. She is the only Slovene speaking care lawyer in the UK.

She is a member of The Family Law Panel and regularly provides pro bono advice to parents that contact her through Only Dads or Only Mums.

Irena is committed to work with the local community and has done so whilst being in the Reading office through extensive involvement with local charitable organisations and pro-bono work that the staff at the Reading Office undertook under Irena’s leadership. This included extensive involvement with Flag DV, Alana House, and BWA – Crossing Bridges. Irena herself undertakes pro-bono work with all the above organisations and has been a trustee of Flag DV charity since 2016.

Read what clients say:

“I cannot thank you enough for seeing my daughter and I and agreeing to take our case on as we did not feel confident with her solicitors”….”Your advice and support was amazing and they [daughter and granddaughter] are now doing beautifully and it all seems like a bad dream. Thank you so much”.

“Just wanted to send a quick email to thank you for always replying to me promptly, forwarding emails as soon as you get them and just for being there for a chat when I need advice. You’ve been great and I just wanted you to know how grateful I am.” – KW

“I just wanted to say that I cannot even begin to thank you for all the hard work you’ve done over the last year. It means an enormous amount to me and I cannot thank you enough.” – Ms K.

“I have had two really unpleasant experiences with two different law firms on which I felt not only treated badly, but also scammed and a bit financially abused. After talking with Lee, the BH&O receptionist over the phone I felt that her way of attending to me as a customer was more personal and humane than my previous occasions (by the way, I think she is a top-notch administrator). But my awe and surprise came with meeting Irena Osborne. Thank you very much for being such a humane person with a genuine interest in the wellbeing of my child. In my previous dealings with family solicitors I could not help but feel that the only interest they had was to cash in as much money as possible from me (despite having little because I am a recipient of Universal Credit), and less interested in providing any coherent, sensible or truly useful legal advice for my rather complex case.

Irena, in one single conversation you have had a deeper understanding of my particular situation (its complexities and the psyche of my child’s mother), and consequently provide more useful legal advice, than two previous solicitors spending months on my case. Congratulations on your professionalism and experience as a family solicitor. Thank you very much indeed Irena! Please, feel free to share this email as your supervisor should be aware of your great performance and flawless professionalism.” – CC