Posts
“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...
President’s guidance as to reporting on family courts
As part of the decision made by the President of the Family Division in the appeal by TP member, Louise Tickle in February, Sir Andrew McFarlane stated that guidance to courts would need to be issued to address the uncertainty that existed if a journalist or legal...
Accuracy enthusiasts ban dodgy headlines – journalist blasts sub-editors for lie that made it around the world before the truth had got its boots on
Last Wednesday, the Mail and the Sun published an article about a father who had just withdrawn from eight years of family court litigation. This man had been trying to re-establish his relationship with his children. His ex, the judge explained in a published...
Nuffield Family Justice Observatory: Supporting better outcomes for children through research
Some readers may remember the 'research-led family justice system' envisaged in the Norgrove Family Justice Review in 2011. However, we're still waiting and, as Sir James Munby explained in this interview, family court professionals can sometimes feel that they are...