By Jo Edwards2021-05-14T11:07:00+01:00
The historic notion of a family lawyer was of a career litigator who treated relationship breakdown as just another commercial dispute. With the advent of national family lawyers’ organisation Resolution in the early 1980s, the Code of Practice to which all members sign up and a focus on specialist training and interdisciplinary working, there has been a sea-change in approach.
There is a fresh breed of family lawyer who triages each client, signposts to the right pathway and does not think of court as the ‘norm’ or encourage it as the only or best way forward. Resolution and others have worked hard to persuade government, after the 2013 legal aid cuts and in pursuit of the return of funding for initial legal advice and signposting to non-court alternatives like mediation, that family lawyers are part of the solution, not the problem. Resolution has also been a key player in the successful campaign for no fault divorce, which will hopefully make a significant difference when it comes into force later this year.