About us
Starling Family Law is a boutique family law practice based in Melbourne.
Starling Family Law was founded to offer a dynamic and client-focused approach to family law that is unable to be provided by traditional law firms. We strive to ensure that our clients understand the process and remain in control of decisions regarding their family, their finances and their future.
Starling Family Law prides itself on providing highly skilled and strategic legal advice in a supportive, compassionate and solutions-focused way. We offer a pragmatic, client-centred approach that delivers positive outcomes to clients.
Family law clients are moving away from firms that are unable to provide exceptional client experience because they are hampered by outdated ideas, technology and resources and that – as the saying goes – if you change nothing, nothing will change. As a boutique firm, we are striving for that change. We are able to be adaptive to our client’s needs and incorporate the use of alternative processes, innovative methods and new technologies to offer progressive services tailored to our clients’ individual circumstances.
At Starling, we know that if you are coming to meet with a family lawyer, you are probably experiencing one of the most difficult periods of your life. By taking a holistic approach to your family law matter, we empower our clients to gain knowledge that will equip them for a stronger future.
Starling Family Law works with a trusted network of accountants and financial advisers, valuers, psychologists and commercial, property and estate planning lawyers to ensure that our clients are supported throughout the family law process by a team of committed professionals.
Why “Starling”?
The name and colour scheme for Starling Family Law was inspired by the blue-eared starling, a glossy starling described as the “dazzling jewel of the avian world”. Glossy starlings possess iridescent plumage that refracts – not reflects – light. That is, their feathers bend the light away so that their plumage changes colour in different light. Like the glossy starling, at Starling Family Law we are able to change our “feathers” depending on the circumstances rather than taking an unvarying, unchanging approach to the way we practise.
Both starlings and Starling Family Law are highly adaptable. The starling’s ability to adapt to different environments has allowed them to thrive, showcasing their resilience in the face of change, as has ours. Starlings adopt a “multimodal navigation system” by taking their cues from the position of the sun, light in the sky and magnetic field and respond to environmental changes. We too take multimodal cues and respond to change in both our client’s environments and the legal environment.
Starlings are gregarious and have complex and intricate social hierarchies that change and shift as required. They have cooperative breeding efforts and help raise their siblings, niblings, cousins or sometimes even unrelated offspring – which, as family lawyers, is something with which we can both relate to and admire.
Starling chicks are helpless and blind when they hatch and they need their mum and dad to help eat, grow and learn to function. Both parents take turns incubating the eggs and feeding the chicks. Although we will never meet them, we are cognisant of the importance of, and impact on, your own children in your family law matter and have their welfare in mind always.
Starlings are well known for murmuration, a coordinated movement of a large number of birds in a dynamic and mesmerising aerial display, that you will see featured on our website. These complex and coordinated manoeuvres are possible due to starlings’ ability to monitor those around them and react by adjusting their flight path almost instantaneously. At Starling Family Law, we also monitor and adjust our approach in response to what is going on around us in family law matters and by being aware of changing dynamics.
Starlings are clever and have advanced communication skills, and can mimic noises they hear by listening carefully and repeating sounds back. They are able to adjust their pitch, tone and the rhythm of their vocalisations. As lawyers, it is crucial that we adjust our tone and communication style when dealing with different matters or processes and not rely on a “one size fits all” approach.
Like lawyers, starlings can be dismissed as a bit pesky! But they have many admirable qualities that align with our values here at Starling Family Law and the change that we strive to create.
