If you’ve spent any time on this website, you know what I do for a living. I’m a Virtual Assistant. I bring calm to chaos, clarity to confusion, and a properly tidy inbox to people who haven’t seen the bottom of theirs in months.
But there’s another part of what I do that you might not know about. I’m also a McKenzie Friend.
If your first reaction is “a what?”, you’re not alone — most people have never heard the term until they need one. So let me explain, and then let me tell you why this sits on a Virtual Assistant website instead of being tucked away somewhere quieter.
What on earth is a McKenzie Friend?
A McKenzie Friend is someone who supports a person representing themselves in court — a “litigant in person.” I’m not a solicitor or a barrister. I can’t give legal advice. But I can sit beside someone in a hearing, take notes, help them stay organised, quietly pass them the bundle of papers they need, and make sure they don’t fall apart in a system that can feel completely overwhelming.
It’s an officially recognised role in the UK courts. It exists because not everyone can afford a solicitor — and even those who can sometimes just want someone calm in their corner who isn’t billing them by the hour.
I focus on family cases. Divorce. Child arrangements. Financial proceedings. The stuff that keeps people awake at 3am.
Why I do it
The short answer is: I’ve been on the other side of it. I’ve watched people I care about try to navigate the family courts on their own, drowning in paperwork they didn’t understand, in a process that felt designed to make them feel small. And I couldn’t sit with that.
The longer answer is that, somewhere along the line, I realised every skill I’d built doing what I do — staying organised under pressure, keeping calm when someone else can’t, making sense of mountains of paper, knowing what needs doing and when — all of it could do something genuinely useful in a courtroom. Not as a lawyer. As the person beside the person.
There’s also a bigger picture. Access to justice in this country is not what it should be. Legal aid for family cases has been hollowed out. The number of people standing in front of a judge with no support at all has gone up year on year. McKenzie Friends don’t fix that. But we plug a tiny gap, for the people lucky enough to find us.
So why is it on a VA website?
Fair question. On paper, “Virtual Assistant” and “McKenzie Friend” look like two completely unrelated jobs. They’re not.
Strip both back to what they actually are, and they’re the same thing: calm, organised support for people who are juggling more than feels manageable. The setting changes. The skills don’t.
When I support a business owner, the chaos is overflowing inboxes, missed invoices, things falling through the cracks. When I support someone going through a family court process, the chaos is bundles of evidence, hearing dates, statements that have to land just right. Different paperwork, same need. Same person showing up to help.
I didn’t want this part of what I do to live in some quiet corner of the internet like a guilty secret. The clients who hire me as a VA are often the same people who, three years later, end up needing someone alongside them through something hard. If they already know me, already trust me — that matters.
It also says something about how I work. I don’t separate my professional self from the person who turns up. If you hire me, you get all of me. The colour-coded spreadsheets, the dark sense of humour, and the willingness to sit in a courtroom on a Tuesday morning for someone who’s terrified.
A quiet word, if you’re reading this and you need help
If you’re facing the family courts on your own and feeling like you’re sinking — please know that you’re not the first person to feel this way, and you won’t be the last. McKenzie Friends aren’t the only answer (Citizens Advice, mediation services, and proper solicitors all have their place), but if you’d like someone calm in your corner, drop me a line. We can have a chat. No pressure, no pitch, no clock running.
And if you’re a business owner who came here for VA support and you’ve just read about a side of my work you didn’t know about? Now you do. I hope it tells you something useful about how I show up.
Whether you need help with your inbox, your invoices, or something a lot heavier — you can reach me on 07961 548 495 or email me rachel.clarkeva@gmail.com
Rachel Clarke 
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