Lou is a partner at Miles & Partners and is head of the Housing and Community Care Team there. However, her pathway into the law was unconventional. She initially trained as a cabinet maker and worked as a carpenter whilst at the same time volunteering at the Advisory Service for Squatters (ASS) and playing an active role in the London squatting movement. She still provides back-up support to ASS.
In the mid-1990s she worked for Mind in Tower Hamlets as a welfare rights and housing adviser (she also taught woodwork). Lou then spent fifteen years as a Housing and Community worker at Tower Hamlets Law Centre. Her role there included tackling and raising awareness of domestic violence and racial harassment on local estates and she gave evidence arising from that work to the Stephen Lawrence Enquiry. She moved to Miles & Partners in 2012.
Lou is a trainer for Shelter and delivers seminars for HLPA on a regular basis.
