Allocate this

I’ve been thinking about blame lately. You lose count in this job of the number of people you meet who don’t want to take responsibility for their own actions. Husband blames wife (and vice versa) or the new boyfriend, client blames lawyer, social worker, child, the system – for failed relationships, for poor parenting, for [...]

Judicial Appointments Commission Get Linked In

I was interested to receive a message in my in box on LinkedIn today encouraging me to visit this website run by the Judicial Appointments Commission website to find out more about the changing face of the judiciary. This is a really innovative use of social media by the legal community and is a great [...]

Interlo-cutey

Ooops. Here is a post which I drafted some weeks ago and apparently failed to publish, in the haze of maternity leave. It’s still topical, so I’ll post it here. The President’s Interim Guidance has indeed since been extended as foretold by this post. . News that the President’s Interim Guidance in Respect of CAFCASS [...]

Wall LJ to be Appointed President of Family Division

Further to my previous post Lord Justice Wall is indeed to be appointed as President of the Family Division, taking over from Mark Potter on a date yet to be confirmed. POSTSCRIPT: See this extract from Hansard for no explanation at all regarding the delay in the announcement (hat tip to Brick, whose comment on [...]

Renewed Efforts

The President’s Interim Guidance has been reissued to take effect for six months from April 2010, with PDs to accompany it. The initial emergency measures were intended to reduce CAFCASS backlogs by the end of March, but this extension of the Guidance is an acknowledgment that – as yet – the measures have not worked. [...]

Tear Down The Wall…

Charon QC is right. I have to comment on Jack Straw’s apparent reluctance to appoint Lord Justice Wall as the new President of the Family Division, reported on here by The Times. It is difficult to think of any reason for Mr Straw’s request that the appointment panel reconsider other than Wall LJ’s willingness to [...]

Well – DUUR!!

News just in from the FLBA: The Report from Francis Plowden – the Review of Court Fees in Child Care Proceedings – was published yesterday. Francis Plowden recommends (unsurprisingly?) abolition of fees for Local Authorities bringing child care proceedings. The Government has accepted this recommendation, and will implement it in April 2011 alongside the next three-year funding settlement [...]

Social Media As Evidence

Most often experienced in family law in all its excruciating banality in the form of facebook mudslinging between exes, this post from Justin McShane reminds us that what we post online can be incriminating in oh so many ways. Be careful what you post. It may just come back to haunt you…Being tagged by a [...]

Hello – Do you COPY?

Green ink alert! . Maybe its just the slight irritability that comes with having been up all night with Braxton Hicks contractions, or maybe it’s a legitimate gripe. But why is it that Her Maj’s Court Service increasingly expects counsel to stay at court – without payment – drafting orders which by rights should be [...]

Legal Emissions

Public buildings are some of the biggest culprits in terms of carbon emissions according to a government survey reported this week. Amongst the notable offenders is the Royal Courts of Justice, which is in some respects surprising given how icy cold it always seems to be in the court rooms there (I have many memories [...]