Legal giants fight for Madonna's millions

Two of the country's most formidable matrimonial lawyers are preparing to represent Madonna and Guy Ritchie in what could be the biggest divorce in British legal history.

Fiona Shackleton, 52, nicknamed the "Steel Magnolia", is reported to be advising Madonna. She acted for Sir Paul McCartney and Prince Charles in their divorces, Ritchie is believed to have plumped for Lady Helen Ward, 57, a solicitor with an equally impressive pedigree. Should their respective briefs be accepted, the celebrity couple, whose joint fortune is more than £300m, will be well matched both in the shuttle diplomacy of a mediation and in the heat of a courtroom battle.

Lady Ward is one of the most tenacious divorce lawyers in London and her clients have included the fashion designer Paloma Picasso, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and author Ian McEwan. She is a deputy district judge of the Principal Registry of the Family Division of the High Court and is married to an appeal court judge, Sir Alan Ward. For Ritchie, however, her most relevant claim to legal fame may be that she secured Beverly Charman her record-breaking £48m divorce from John Charman, the Lloyds insurance tycoon, last year.

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Mrs Shackleton, who is married with two daughters, was catapulted into the big league by the royal divorces of Prince Andrew and Sarah, Duchess of York, and the Prince of Wales and his first wife, Diana. While Charles was forced to pay £17m – a fair sum back in 1996 – Mrs Shackleton struck a hard bargain and forced Diana to relinquish the title "Her Royal Highness", a humiliating fate that also befell Sarah Ferguson. Diana bore Mrs Shackleton no ill will, however, and sent her flowers at the end of the case as a thank you for "being so civilised".

When Mrs Shackleton was later reported to be unhappy at her law firm Farrer's, it was suggested that some of her colleagues at the staid practice were jealous of the famous, glamorous solicitor in their midst.

Earlier this year, she lived up to her sobriquet of "Steel Magnolia" when Heather Mills-McCartney tipped a jug of water over her head during her High Court divorce battle with the former Beatle. The solicitor dismissed the attempt at public humiliation by brushing back her hair and walking out on to the steps of the court in defiant support of Sir Paul.

Both she and Lady Helen have excellent litigation skills but they come at a price, of course. The £1,000-an-hour Mrs Shackleton is said to have charged Sir Paul for her services, earning her law firm Payne Hicks Beach up to £3m, looks like good business. Mills wanted £125m from her estranged husband but ended up with £24.3m thanks to Mrs Shackleton's legal skills. Not bad for a woman who was considered academically unremarkable at Benenden, her public school, and who only scraped through her law degree at Exeter University.

Lady Ward, whose fees are similar to Mrs Shackleton's, was admitted as a solicitor in 1978 before becoming a partner at the private client law firm, Ward Bowie Penningtons. She joined Manches as a partner in 1994. She now specialises in family law, with emphasis on the financial consequences of relationship breakdown and particular expertise in cases involving substantial assets, complexity and an international element. Manches says of its star: "Where it is necessary, she also deals with cases involving the resolution of disputes relating to the children."

Such a specification could have been specially drafted for the job of advising Ritchie in his divorce from Madonna.

Lady Ward and her husband suffered personal tragedy in 2001 when their daughter Amelia, 16, died in a rock fall during a school trip to South Africa.

Neither Manches nor Payne Hicks Beach would comment on the Madonna case last night.