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50 years in family law

31 March 2023 / David Burrows
Issue: 8019 / Categories: Features , Family , Mediation , ADR
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In a very special article, David Burrows marks half a century at the coalface: has anything changed for the better?
  • The key changes in the family law field over the last 50 years, including in children law, judicial case management, mediation, child support, and the splitting-out of family proceedings from the wider community of civil proceedings.

On 1 March 1973, I was admitted as a solicitor of the Supreme Court. I have a certificate signed by ‘Denning M.R.’ (Lord Denning was then Master of the Rolls). I later mutated—without anyone asking if I minded (I do)—to being a solicitor of the senior courts. Somewhere in the middle of all that (July 1997), I was renamed a ‘solicitor advocate’. I was then allowed to appear as advocate in all courts.

Five areas of law—mostly family law (my specialist area, loosely interpreted)—have developed in those 50 years, not always for the better:

  • children law;
  • judicial case management;
  • mediation in family law;
  • child support; and
  • ghettoisation of family proceedings from
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NEWS
Artificial intelligence may be revolutionising the law, but its misuse could wreck cases and careers, warns Clare Arthurs of Penningtons Manches Cooper in this week's NLJ
Bea Rossetto of the National Pro Bono Centre makes the case for ‘General Practice Pro Bono’—using core legal skills to deliver life-changing support, without the need for niche expertise—in this week's NLJ
Small law firms want to embrace technology but feel lost in a maze of jargon, costs and compliance fears, writes Aisling O’Connell of the Solicitors Regulation Authority in this week's NLJ
Charles Pigott of Mills & Reeve reports on Haynes v Thomson, the first judicial application of the Supreme Court’s For Women Scotland ruling in a discrimination claim, in this week's NLJ
The Supreme Court issued a landmark judgment in July that overturned the convictions of Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo, once poster boys of the Libor and Euribor scandal. In NLJ this week, Neil Swift of Peters & Peters considers what the ruling means for financial law enforcement
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