Well Street

READ THIS. For anyone wanting to get a realistic idea of what happens in the family court, particularly the FPC (Magistrates) and care proceedings this article is a great starting place. It also gives a better flavour of the work of the FDAC (Family Drug & Alcohol Court) Pilot which I posted about recently.

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Why hasn’t this been done before? People complain about the secrecy of the system but of course in the FPC the press are allowed into court. Nonetheless the press never usually bother reporting it…

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blustery days

Since my last post regarding the proposed cuts in family legal aid and the press coverage of it, it appears that matters have moved on. The CEO of the LSC has acknowledged that the figure of £140,000 quoted in the press (and arising from LSC private press briefings) as representing average earnings of family legal aid barristers is inaccurate (no surprise there then). As a reminder the original article quoted Crispin Passmore, Director of the Community Legal Service, as saying, “The average annual earnings from family legal aid work is £140,000 – and that doesn’t include any privately paid work they might do. So we are not talking about the minimum wage”. The LSC assert that there has been ‘some misunderstanding in the interpretation of figures’ – what is notably NOT suggested is that the Times have attributed statements to Mr Passmore that he did not make. Assuming therefore that Mr Passmore did make the remarks, the twin questions arise – how and more importantly WHY were they made?

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fundamentally wrong

Last night’s tv involved (apart from the footy) a Louie Theroux style documentary about a fundamentalist christian group who, amongst other things were behind the unsuccessful McClintock tribunal case (magistrate refusing to place children in the care system with same sex couples – see previous post).

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More upsetting than the crackers views espoused by this group, and their plain ill temper in response to the documentary makers perfectly reasonable questions was the way the organisation’s public policy director, a barrister,  was completely unable to fearlessly defend (or defend at all) the church’s beliefs or activities. When asked a basic question about the contradictions between science / evidence and her religious dogma she simply switched off her mic or asked to turn off the camera. She didn’t even try to argue the point or fall back on the ‘faith’ explanation. Nothing. Apparently she gave up her career at the bar to support the`church. Just as well. But I don’t think she’ll be winning many converts.

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A storm is a comin’

Uh – oh…perhaps I’d better stay on maternity leave. There may be no family bar to come back to if what I am reading in the press is anything to go by. According to private briefings given by the LSC to the press this week we are in for a 15% cut of our fees. And according to the LSC thats 15% of the ‘average family legal aid income of £140k’. This was reported yesterday by The Times. Of course there have been no figures provided to back up this patently bonkers figure – I WISH it were true but I’m pretty certain that most family lawyers make far less than 140k AND supplement their legal aid income by doing privately paid work. Of course some make much more than £140k but then some family lawyers are involved in extremely complex and lengthy cases which require an immense amount of work and expertise (think non-accidental injury or sexual abuse cases which may run for weeks and have multiple experts and related criminal proceedings).

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New Domestic Violence Practice Direction Published

The President’s new PD on DV was circulated last week. Whilst I don’t think it does anything other than codify existing best practice (admittedly often departed from by some individual members of the judiciary or some local courts) it is a helpful document for both lawyers and – I think – litigants. Whilst the PD is not written for litigants themselves, and is therefore framed in more lawyerly terms than some might choose, I think many litigants might be assisted by understanding the general framework and approach into which their own case is being fitted. Many litigants (whether victim or alleged perpetrator) don’t understand the basic premises upon which the courts’ approach to dealing with allegations of violence are resting. Often litigants are in person or do not have this adequately explained to them by their lawyers and they see only delay rather than the purpose behind it, see only unfairness rather than the twin aims of fairness and best interests which underpin everything.

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Of course the system has its critics who will say that those aims are not achieved, and that may often be right, but I still think it may be useful for litigants in person to see the PD themselves so that they are not completely at see. So, here it is: final-signed-version-of-domestic-violence-pd-9th-may-2008.

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I posted about extended family members being viewed as the cheap option by local authorities before – often being paid less than any other foster carer would be paid notwithstanding the fact that they are doing the same job, arguably with value-added. Here is another example of a Local Authority being taken to task over such practice.

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