Posts

Cape v Dring and legal blogging
This blog post originally appeared as the Transparency Project's monthly column for October 2019 in Family Law [2019] Fam Law 1208(1). Cape v Dring In July 2019, the Supreme Court handed down judgment in the case of Cape Intermediate Holdings Ltd v Dring (Asbestos...

The transparency of family court appeals: the new Practice Direction 30B
In family proceedings, some appeals go to the Court of Appeal, some (mostly) to a High Court judge in the Family Division of the High Court or the Family Court. Routinely Court of Appeal appeals are heard in open court and the parties, other than children, are named...

Brothers’ and sisters’ rights in care
Many people believe that we do not pay enough attention to the rights of children in care to stay with, or at least stay in touch with, their brothers and sisters. Our relationships with our brothers and sisters can be the longest and most valuable in our lives but,...

“Financial advisers – better at financial advice than law – who’da thunk it?”
This is a guest post from Anna Heenan, lecturer in law at Cardiff University School of Law and Politics and consultant with the Family Law Practice, Bristol. Anna would like to thank Dr Sharon Thompson for her assistance with this post. This week, the Telegraph...

TP wins pro bono innovation of the year award
We are rather chuffed to say that the day before yesterday we unexpectedly won an award. Wednesday night was the Bar Pro Bono awards ceremony, and we were in the running for the pro bono innovation award, as a result of our work getting legal blogging established in...

The Public and the ‘Future Court’
This is a joint post by Alice Twaite and Judith Townend A Future Court and Tribunal Service Built for Users was the title of Tuesday’s HMCTS annual public event to inform court users and their representatives about progress of the court modernisation programme, 12...

IPSO continues to fail most Leveson recommendations, finds Media Standards Trust
The Media Standards Trust has issued a highly critical follow-up report on its earlier assessment of the extent to which Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) system of press regulation satisfies the requirements of the Leveson Inquiry Report 2012. The new...

‘Are you here because of the significant failure?’
As it happens I wasn't, and the lawyer who asked me this had assumed wrongly. I was attending court just to see what was on that day, and to use the legal blogging pilot to try to report a typical day in the life of a circuit judge. But I'd stumbled upon a case where,...

Ordinary heartbreak
This post is about a hearing I attended recently as a legal blogger. I wrote about the overall experience that day here. This hearing was a case management hearing in a care case. Although such cases are private and I would not normally be permitted to write publicly...

The four corners of legal blogging
Recently I found myself with a day free of hearings or pressing work, and decided to spend it legal blogging. The night before the hearing I took a look at the court lists, and identified one with several shortish hearings that (based on the case number and...