Reporting the Reporter

I have a current bugbear, but don’t get me wrong: I don’t want to add to the mass of negativity surrounding the dread word ‘social worker’. This post really only concerns the cases where the quality of s7 reports prepared by social workers in private proceedings falls far short of the expected standard. Most reports [...]

‘Don’t you lot EVER think about the kids?’

No, you are absolutely right. We have spent years acquiring expertise, passed up the opportunity to earn three times as much money in any other area of law you care to choose, regularly work into the night reading graphic details about head injuries and abuse and neglect, and spend 50% of our time telling our [...]

Legal Action Group Director Warns of Loss of Skilled Practitioners

Steve Hynes, Director of LAG, talks to CharonQC about the proposed cuts in Legal Aid (amongst other things). Talking about the family bar his view is that the government has “pushed it about as far as they are able to without causing serious damage to the practitioner base”. He talks about his annoyance that Jack Straw [...]

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 [...]

You can’t have your cake OR eat it…but the cake is the same size as it always was

It wasn’t a good start. They concluded the presentation ten minutes before the advertised start time meaning that I missed it even though I was early. That was the second session and I had missed the first part entirely as I had been stuck at court on just the kind of case that will be [...]

A Friendly Pointer

Further to previous posts here  and here about McKenzie friends… QUESTION: I am about to embark on a journey as a McKenzie Friend to my partner, who has been involved in a long legal battle for residency/contact etc. She is now broke and cannot afford to pay for a solicitor. Her ex is likely to object [...]

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 [...]

Reforming the Grad Fee Scheme – Consultation Open

The Consultation Paper on Reforming the Family Barrister Fees Scheme has been published today. . Commenting on the consultation, Lucy Theis QC, Chair of the Family Law Bar Association, said:  . ‘The protection of children is a concern to all of us. A robust legal aid system is vital to prevent damage to children – [...]