Jo Renshaw

Partner, Head of Personal and Family Immigration team

Jo a Partner and is Head of our Family & Personal Immigration team.

Jo graduated from Oxford University with a degree in Politics and Philosophy. She initially qualified as a solicitor in Australia in 1993 where she worked as a Judge’s Associate and then as Co-ordinator of the Refugee Advice Service. On her return to the UK in 1999, she qualified as a solicitor in the UK and worked in the immigration team at Jackson & Canter in Liverpool before joining Turpin Miller in 2005.

Jo is one of only a small number of immigration solicitors accredited by the Law Society as an Advanced Immigration Caseworker. She is a Legal Aid Agency Peer Reviewer in the immigration category, an Accredited Supervisor and is also the legal advisor to the Southampton & Winchester Visitors’ Group, Legal Justice Project, where she runs workshops for the volunteers as well as providing general and specific advice on individual cases (https://swvg-refugees.org.uk/.

Jo is on the Editorial Board of the Lexis Nexis Immigration Service and is also one of their specialist authors, writing practice notes for other immigration lawyers (https://lexisweb.co.uk/users/jo-renshaw). She was a member of the advisory board for the Best Practice Guide: Expert country evidence in asylum and immigration cases in the United Kingdom (School of Social & Political Science, University of Edinburgh) and was a contributor to Making an Asylum Application; a Best Practice Guide (Immigration Law Practitioners Association). She is the author of the current Immigration and Asylum volume of Halsbury’s Laws of England (https://www.lexisnexis.co.uk/products/halsburys-laws-of-england.html).

She has published a number of articles on the impact of the withdrawal of legal aid in immigration matters and has been a judge for the Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year Awards several times. In July 2015 she won the prestigious national Legal Aid Social Welfare Lawyer of the Year Award (http://legalvoice.org.uk/lalys-2015-lets-show-them-how-legal-aid-lawyers-fight/).

Jo has acted as an expert witness in a number of criminal and family cases involving immigration matters. She practises across the whole spectrum of immigration and asylum law, undertaking both private and publicly funded work.