We don’t need no Ed-ew-ca-shun
Earlier this week I spent a day on a Court of Protection course. Just as we were all entering a post lunch semi-vegative state, up strode Wall LJ to the podium. He is both President of the Family Division and of the Court of Protection. Readers of this blog may find his brief address interesting. [...]
Legal Lookalikes
There are a growing number of quasi-legal services out there for litigants in person involved in family proceedings, and it is no surprise that many of them are advertised via the internet. I come across them increasingly frequently and they come in varying degrees of professionalism: from the ramshackle campaigning group with a few seasoned [...]
Barrister in 'No Duty to Child' Shock
One of the first things we are taught in bar school is that our job is to ‘promote and protect fearlessly and by all proper and lawful means the lay client’s best interests and do so without regard to his own interests or to any consequences to himself or to any other person’ (pa 303). Hand [...]
McKenzie Friends – Updated PD
The Practice Direction on McKenzie’s has been amended to take account of the recent judgment in N (A Child) [2008] EWHC 2042 (Fam). In short, exceptional circumstances are not a prerequisite for the grant of rights of audience to a McKenzie Friend: although the starting point is that this will not ordinarily be permitted a McKenzie [...]
between two stools
Legal aid is all well and good if you can get it but for many people legal expenses have to be met from elsewhere…If the world were divided into those who can’t afford to pay for representation and those who can’t and if everyone who fell into the former category got legal aid – it [...]
McKenzie Friends
Just as I was pondering what I might blog about this weekend an email arrived in my inbox about an article I once wrote on McKenzie Friends. The email contained some information concerning the alleged actions of a representative of a father’s rights group who had been acting as a McKenzie friend in children proceedings. It was [...]
