Family

Divorce applications submitted before they should have been and wrongly allowed to proceed due to an error in the courts’ IT system are voidable – but not void, the High Court has ruled.

An online service specialising in uncontested divorces has become an alternative business structure regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

The largest family law firm in the country is to pilot an unbundled service and offer clients more holistic support as part of a move to widen the current offering, its executive chairman has revealed.

The largest family law firm in the country, Stowe Family Law, has been sold by its private equity owner to a global investment giant entering the legal market for the first time.

Artificial intelligence is being developed for “triage and work allocation” in law firms and particularly for conveyancing, a director of the SRA has said.

Legal regulators must warn lawyers that they will face action to stop them unethically taking advantage of vulnerable litigants, a charity has urged.

The SRA is to examine how family law and landlord and tenant law specialists maintain their competence amid increasing reports about their practices.

Financial remedy proceedings to which the Court of Appeal said a litigation funder could be a party so as to protect the £1m it was owed by the wife have now been dropped with the money still owing.

A solicitor who withdrew from a Family Court hearing over a fee dispute so late that he left his client no chance to find a replacement has been rebuked by the SRA.

There is currently “not a vision” for how people in the family justice system, clients and professionals, can “safely harness” the benefits of artificial intelligence, research has argued.