Issues Summer 2023-2024

Family Law is a challenging speciality and practitioners who work in this area often get a bad rap from the public and the media. Clients are usually at their most vulnerable and stress levels are exacerbated by ongoing delays and rising costs, compounding the emotional and financial toll of a process where there are no real ‘winners’, only bills to be paid.

The quote “Lawyers divide wealth. They create none” is often attributed to former US President Thomas Jefferson, although it is more likely to have originated from a 1920s book called “The People’s Lawyer” by Albert P Blaustein. The public perception of lawyers as professionals who are ‘just in it for the money’ doesn’t appear to have improved over time and a quick Google search of the words ‘lawyers are…’ will come up with terms such as ‘leeches’, ‘liars’ and ‘scum’. Family report writers don’t fare much better with search engines offering links to cases where report writers have been discredited and mediators are referred to as having ‘failed’ when dealing with clients who are more interested in fighting than settling. Even public media corporations, who pride themselves on being impartial, seem to take particular pleasure in portraying the family law system and its practitioners in a negative light.

So why do we choose to work in such a difficult and stressful area? There are certainly days where other options appear so much more attractive. This is a question that I have found myself pondering as I prepare for my annual lecture to the Psychology Post Graduate students on ‘Pathways to Becoming a Family Law Single Expert’. These lectures are usually well attended by an attentive audience intrigued by the notion of being part of Court proceedings and repelled by the idea of having to undergo regular cross-examination, often in equal measure.

In this edition of Issues, we ask a Single Expert Witness, a Barrister and a Family Dispute Resolution Mediator….What’s good about Family Law?