By the time a family office instructs a disputes lawyer, most of the decisions that will determine how the dispute unfolds have already been taken. Which jurisdiction governs the agreement. Whether the parties are bound to arbitrate or free to issue proceedings. What becomes visible on a court file. None of those choices felt like dispute planning when they were made; they were clauses in documents drawn up for other reasons, often years earlier, by advisers focused on structuring rather than conflict.
Jonathan Child, a Partner at Velitor Law, acts in complex, high-value international disputes — commercial and corporate matters, insolvency disputes, urgent interim relief — with a practice spanning the English High Court and the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court. He is admitted in England and Wales and in the British Virgin Islands.
The context is shifting beneath the families he advises. From January 2026, an English courts pilot allows anyone to obtain key litigation documents for a small fee — a change of little consequence to most litigants and considerable consequence to a family whose affairs have never been public. Ahead of the UK Family Office Summit Oxford 2026, UK Private Wealth Magazine asked him what that means for how families structure agreements, when specialist advice is worth taking, and why a discipline everyone accepts in principle is so rarely funded in advance.
Please introduce yourself, your organisation and your role.
I’m a Partner at Velitor Law, a leading, ranked boutique disputes firm based in London [Legal 500 – Commercial Litigation: Mid-Market ranking]. I work with individuals, family offices and their teams, as well as organisations, to guide them through disputes and periods of crisis.
We act on all forms of commercial disputes and reputation management matters, and have acted for members of royal families across Europe and the Middle East, UHNW and HNW individuals, shareholders and stakeholders, VC funds, and entrepreneurs and their organisations.
What does Velitor Law do, and how does it support family offices, wealth owners, institutional investors or the wider private capital community?
When a dispute lands on a family office’s desk or with the management team of a fund, the concerns are rarely just legal. It’s confidentiality – who finds out. It’s reputation – the implications for the family or the business, not just its balance sheet. Increasingly, it’s cross-border complexity too – assets, structures and relationships spread across multiple jurisdictions, each with different rules on how a dispute is managed and conducted.
That’s the world Velitor works in. Our clients include entrepreneurs, family offices, high-net-worth individuals and financial organisations, each with disputes where the stakes are high and clear, strategic thinking is essential.
We deliberately run a “light and fleet” model: senior, conflict-free litigators working directly on the matter, rather than layers of a large firm, which matters when discretion and speed are the priority. With relationships in Cayman, BVI, Hong Kong, Dubai and Abu Dhabi, we support clients seamlessly across borders.
Our work spans contractual disputes, civil fraud, contentious insolvency, trusts and asset-tracing, cross-border litigation, arbitration, competition damages and real estate disputes.
What are the biggest opportunities and challenges currently shaping your sector?
Three particular themes are shaping disputes.
First, litigation funding. The funding landscape has grown more sophisticated, and for family offices this cuts two ways – as claimants using funders to de-risk a dispute, and increasingly as funders or investors themselves.
What I’d say to any family office, or client generally, looking at this is that the choice of lawyer to manage that funding relationship from the outset matters as much as the funding terms themselves, and that it is really important to work with a funder who is the right fit for the matter.
We have worked with a number of different funders across a variety of cases, and it’s incredibly important to recognise that as much as it’s a results business, it’s also, fundamentally, a relationship business.
Second, public access to court documents. From January 2026, the Access to Public Domain Documents Pilot means anyone can obtain key litigation documents from the English courts for a small fee.
For most litigants that’s a footnote. For family offices and UHNW clients, it’s a material shift – details that would once have stayed largely private are now purchasable by journalists, competitors or curious third parties.
That should form part of the decision-making on how family offices approach and structure their dispute clauses at the very outset of any venture or relationship.
Third is AI. As with many businesses, AI is changing the way legal services are delivered. It has the opportunity to reduce cost and deliver quicker and smarter outputs in disputes when managed and marshalled properly.
At Velitor, we are constantly looking to harness this and other technological developments to give our clients the cutting edge in their disputes.
"Disputes are a ‘crisis purchase.’ Nobody plans for one."
What trends do you believe will have the greatest impact on private wealth and private capital over the next five to ten years?
From a disputes perspective, two trends stand out.
First, we’re seeing continued growth in arbitration and strict ADR clauses in family and shareholder agreements. This is driven by two things: privacy, and the ability to force meaningful engagement before a dispute becomes public and adversarial.
Second, and this is the point I’d underline, disputes are a “crisis purchase.” Nobody plans for one. But we live in an increasingly litigious environment, and the family offices who fare best are the ones who treat early, specialist advice as insurance rather than an afterthought once a dispute is already live.
What expertise or perspective are you looking forward to bringing to discussions at the UK Family Office Summit Oxford?
I’ll be bringing a dispute-resolution perspective to a summit agenda that’s often dominated by succession and structuring questions – in particular, how principals can build dispute planning and avoidance into their long-term wealth strategy from the outset, rather than treating it as an afterthought.
That feels especially relevant to the panel on “The Great Wealth Transition: Succession, Structures & the Future of Family Wealth.”
I’m also looking forward to comparing notes with family office principals and their teams on how their appetite for disputes is changing – particularly whether privacy and reputation concerns are now driving decisions earlier in a dispute than they used to.
What advice would you offer family offices, wealth owners or investors navigating today’s rapidly changing environment?
Benjamin Franklin’s adage that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” remains as relevant as ever, particularly from a disputes perspective.
Concretely, that means:
1. Building clear dispute resolution and escalation clauses into agreements before there’s any disagreement to test them against.
2. Bringing disputes specialists in early, not just once something has gone wrong.
3. Using advisers who know your world – your business model, your delivery expectations, and who specialise in what they do.
This interview is provided for general editorial and informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, investment, tax or other professional advice.