One lawyer, two clients model suggested as a solution to court delays

Article summary

Juliet Harvey, national chair of family law organisation Resolution, gave an address at the Family Practice Conference in Nottingham on 7 October 2022 in which she highlighted the 'desperate state' of the family courts, which she described as 'underfunded and understaffed' with increasing delays and backlogs and statistics that show that the average period from the date of a divorce/dissolution petition/application to decree absolute/final order is now 56 weeks, up seven weeks from the same time last year. She also highlighted that that access to early legal advice is the best way to help people find alternatives to court and that the introduction of the mediation voucher scheme had resulted in 65% of cases reaching whole or partial agreement in children cases that accessed the scheme, as well as the launch of the Resolution Together (one lawyer, two clients) model. In a further address given by the President of the Family Division, Sir Andrew McFarlane,...