Family

Mediation should no longer be the focus of divorce information meetings and they should be run by “generalist” lawyers and social workers as well as mediators.

The availability of professional indemnity insurance and the capability of clients are the main concerns for law firms looking at unbundled services, research has indicated.

A High Court judge has described as “extremely disquieting” the failure of a North-West law firm to comply with a disclosure order – even though ultimately the order was unnecessary.

Family lawyers group Resolution is to start promoting the ‘one lawyer, two clients’ model for divorce that both law firms and unregulated providers are starting to offer.

The founders of a specialist family law firm have spurned potential acquirors to transfer it instead into an employee ownership trust, saying the move sends a positive signal to would-be staff.

Financial remedy litigation seems to be “fast heading for Ritz Hotel status – so expensive that it is only accessible by the very rich”, a senior family judge warned yesterday.

The work of the new Online Procedure Rules Committee will help connect the whiplash portal and other pre-action regimes to the court system electronically, the deputy head of civil justice has said.

A fixed-fee family law information service was launched this week to “fill a real gap in public knowledge” about the divorce process, and ensure people are properly informed before seeing a solicitor.

The family law market grew by 4.1% in 2021 and the rate of growth should increase in the coming years, but the number of law firms in the field is falling, a new report has found.

Family separation cases should “operate in a transactional way, as with conveyancing, rather than under the banner of litigation”, the chair of the Family Solutions Group has argued.

A litigation funder owed up to £1m by the wife in a “bitterly contested” divorce can be joined as a party to the financial remedy proceedings, the High Court has ruled.

The chairman of Stowe Family Law has said further acquisitions are likely following its first purchase of a law firm, Chapman Pieri in north London, earlier this month.

Family lawyers should be asking their clients whether the menopause is having an impact on them, the founder of the Family Law Menopause Project has said.

A circuit judge has terminated the appointment of the guardian of a young child in care proceedings after he criticised the father’s solicitor in a letter to the law firm’s head of department.

Family law specialists need a better understanding of the impact of the menopause on clients – and female lawyers too – according to the solicitor launching a project to highlight the issue.