Sultana Shawa

Sultana Shawa is an experienced Family and Children Law Solicitor at Wildan Legal Solicitors. She advises and represents clients across a broad range of complex and sensitive family-law matters, combining strong legal knowledge with a practical, strategic and compassionate approach. Sultana has particular experience in proceedings where several urgent and interconnected applications must be managed together. She carefully identifies the legal and practical issues in each case and develops a clear strategy designed to protect her clients and achieve the best available outcome for their families. Sultana is particularly committed to ensuring that vulnerable clients can participate meaningfully in legal proceedings. She has represented clients who are deaf or non-verbal, as well as individuals with learning disabilities, cognitive difficulties, autism and ADHD. She carefully adapts her communication to each client’s needs and seeks appropriate procedural support where required.

Access to justice is central to Sultana’s practice. She has extensive experience preparing and progressing Legal Aid applications and has successfully secured Exceptional Case Funding in multiple matters. Her persistence has enabled clients facing serious family-law difficulties to obtain legal representation where funding might otherwise have been unavailable.

Family and Children Law
Sultana advises and represents clients in both public and private children proceedings. Her experience includes:

• Care and Supervision Proceedings
• Public Law Outline proceedings
• Care and Placement Orders
• Child Arrangements Orders
• Prohibited Steps Orders
• Specific Issue Orders
• Variation and enforcement applications
• Non-Molestation and Occupation Orders
• Forced Marriage Protection Orders
• Divorce and financial-remedy proceedings
• Transfer-of-tenancy applications
• Cohabitation and wider family disputes

Sultana regularly undertakes her own advocacy where appropriate and has represented clients at hearings involving care proceedings, private children disputes, domestic-abuse injunctions, Forced Marriage Protection Orders, financial remedies and transfer-of-tenancy applications. She also participates in Advocates’ Meetings and professionals’ meetings in complex public-law proceedings.

Professional contribution
In addition to managing a demanding caseload, Sultana supervises and supports trainee solicitors and paralegals. She reviews work, provides guidance on legal strategy, delegates tasks and monitors the effective progression of cases. She also contributes to regulatory compliance, costs management, professional networking, client development and the commercial progression of the Family Law Department. Her ability to manage competing priorities while maintaining high standards of client care makes her a trusted and effective member of the team.

Professional philosophy
Sultana believes that excellent legal representation requires both technical expertise and a genuine understanding of the client’s circumstances. Family law matters can affect a person’s safety, home, children and future. She therefore approaches every case with care, sensitivity and close attention to detail. Her advice is clear, practical and realistic. She ensures that clients understand the legal process, the available options and the potential consequences of each decision. Wherever possible, she seeks constructive solutions through focused negotiation. Where court proceedings are necessary, she provides firm, strategic and thoroughly prepared representation. Her objective is not simply to progress a legal case, but to help each client move towards a safer, more secure and sustainable outcome.

Languages
Sultana speaks English and Bengali to full professional proficiency. She also speaks conversational Urdu and Hindi, enabling her to communicate with and support clients from a wide range of backgrounds.