Bloom Law’s first birthday celebrations started a little earlier than planned with Director Kiarah Kelly being named Emerging Leader at Saturday’s Queensland Law Society Excellence in Law Awards.
September will also mark the one-year anniversary of Ms Kelly starting Bloom Law, which specialises in family law, children’s advocacy and parenting support. She founded the firm before turning 30, when her son was nine months old.
As she made her way through the tables at the awards gala, she did a few moves to the Harry Styles song Dance No More and once on stage, thanked the 400-strong crowd for bearing with her slower than usual progress as she is 31 weeks’ pregnant.
“It is incredible to have my team in the back there of incredible women, doing incredible work for families every day,” Ms Kelly said.
“I started my firm because I wanted to do really great family law work, help families. But I also wanted to breastfeed my son.
“I wanted to get to swimming lessons, and the legacy firms weren’t quite ready to give that to me just yet, and so I did it myself.”
Ms Kelly started practice at Brisbane Family Law Centre where she grew to take on a leadership position. She then moved to the role of Senior Associate at Barry Nilsson Lawyers.
She holds a Masters of Applied Law (Family Law), with a thesis on the economic outcomes for women post-separation. The Independent Children’s Lawyer is passionate about promoting children’s best interests, DFV advocacy, and access to justice, and her commitment to helping mothers.
“This is to say, as the great Mr Styles said, respect your mother,” she said, referencing her winner’s song choice.
“All of the mums in the room here, I walk on your shoulders.
“Let’s continue to fight and make this profession a good place to do excellent work and be a really excellent parent as well, because parenting is bloody valuable work and the practice of law can squeeze into the cracks around breastfeeding and swimming lessons. Yes, of course it can.”
The firm’s first year has been a busy one as the team has built community DFV and children’s advocacy resources online. Ms Kelly also presented at the Central Otago Family Law and Mediation Conference in Wanaka, New Zealand, earlier this year.
She’s also kept up her annual commitment to Keebra Park State High School’s legal careers symposium – a school she returns to each year because she believes children from low socio-economic backgrounds deserve to see law as a real option. She also volunteers with Women’s Legal Service Queensland.
Proctor will feature all QLS Excellence in Law Award winners this week
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