Kirstine Hidalgo Souto

Committee Member

Kirstine jointly leads the Child Protection Team at Invicta Law which was initially part of Kent Legal Services, Kent County Council’s in-house legal team, which transitioned to form Invicta Law, a specialist public sector legal firm, in 2017. Prior to that Kirstine trained in private practice at Duncan Lewis (qualifying in 2011) undertaking both private and public law. After qualifying, Kirstine moved to work within the in-house legal team at the London Borough of Tower Hamlets to focus on public law proceedings. When Kirstine first joined Kent Legal Services in 2015, she led the Asylum team dealing with the varying legal issues relating to unaccompanied asylum seeking children entering Kent through the port of Dover, including age assessments (to fact finding), issues regarding no recourse to public funds and human rights act assessments.

Kirstine currently jointly leads a team at Invicta Law of over 60 people dealing primarily with public law proceedings including a number of very complex cases such as fabricated induced illness, inflicted injuries, sexual abuse (including historic), international cases, deprivation of liberty and child death. Kirstine also deals with adoption, judicial reviews and policy advice. Kirstine has delivered training to lawyers and social workers on a variety of topics at both conferences and meetings.