There is a particular stillness that comes just before departure.
Suitcases sit half-packed. Documents are stacked neatly on kitchen tables. Children talk about new bedrooms, new schools, new beaches they have only seen in pictures. Life feels suspended between what has been and what is about to begin.
For Amy-Jade Hughes, that stillness was supposed to last only a few weeks.
She believed she was close to starting a new life in Australia with her young family, the final stretch of a long and careful immigration process. Instead, she found herself standing inside a different kind of pause — one created not by anticipation, but by uncertainty.
Hughes is among thousands of people affected by the sudden closure of PM Law, a legal firm that handled immigration, conveyancing, and other legal services across the UK. The firm’s collapse has left clients unable to access case files, unsure of the status of their applications, and uncertain about what happens next.
For many, PM Law was not just a service provider. It was the bridge between present and future.
In Hughes’s case, that future was mapped out in small, hopeful details: work opportunities, warmer weather, a chance to build something new for her children. Months of paperwork, payments, and communication had created the sense that the hardest part was already behind them.
Then the firm closed.
No warning. No gradual winding-down. Just an abrupt halt.
Clients say they received messages informing them that operations had ceased, with little explanation and few immediate answers. Phone lines went dead. Emails bounced back. Access to online portals disappeared.
Behind each account is a version of the same story: people who thought they were nearly finished discovering that they may, in fact, be back at the beginning.
Regulators and professional bodies have since moved to intervene. Arrangements are being made to secure client files, protect remaining funds, and determine what went wrong. Investigations are expected to follow.
But processes move slowly. Lives, meanwhile, do not.
Families have holidays cancelled, house moves delayed, job offers placed on hold. Some clients say they paid thousands of pounds in legal fees, unsure whether any of that money will be recovered.
For Hughes, the emotional cost rivals the financial one.
Planning to emigrate is not a casual decision. It involves reshaping identity, letting go of familiar landscapes, and imagining oneself elsewhere. When that imagined future collapses suddenly, it leaves a hollow space that is difficult to describe.
There is anger, certainly.
But there is also grief — not for something that existed, but for something that almost did.
The closure of PM Law has also raised broader questions about oversight in the legal sector. Clients assume that regulated firms operate with safeguards that prevent sudden disappearance. When that assumption proves fragile, trust in the system itself begins to wobble.
For now, affected clients are being advised to register their details with appointed administrators and to seek independent legal advice about their options. Some may be able to transfer cases to new firms. Others may need to start over.
None of these routes are simple.
In the Hughes household, conversations about Australia have changed tone. They are quieter now. Less certain. The future still exists, but it feels farther away.
Boxes remain unpacked.
Documents remain in their folders.
The idea of leaving has not vanished. It has merely been postponed, reshaped by forces beyond the family’s control.
And in that waiting space — between what was promised and what is now unknown — Hughes finds herself alongside thousands of others, all holding versions of the same question.
How does a life restart when the path to it suddenly disappears?