Professionals and partisans: lessons for family lawyers from a study of fee-charging McKenzie Friends
Smith, L; Hitchings, E
Date: 11 December 2019
Article
Journal
Child and Family Law Quarterly
Publisher
Jordan Publishing
Abstract
This article seeks to shift the focus of recent debates around the work done by feecharging McKenzie Friends in some family law disputes. It takes some key findings
from a study of fee-charging McKenzie Friends conducted by the authors and situates
them in the context of two bodies of literature: first, work exploring challenges ...
This article seeks to shift the focus of recent debates around the work done by feecharging McKenzie Friends in some family law disputes. It takes some key findings
from a study of fee-charging McKenzie Friends conducted by the authors and situates
them in the context of two bodies of literature: first, work exploring challenges to
traditional legal services made by non-lawyers; and secondly work exploring the
practices of family lawyers. Through an analysis of the services offered by feecharging McKenzie Friends (the ‘partisans’ of our title) and the views of their litigant in
person clients, we argue that the service offered by many McKenzie Friends appears
to contrast with aspects of the services offered by lawyers (the ‘professionals’) that
have been recognised as problematic in family law for decades. This presents a
challenge for family law practitioners, policy-makers and researchers – namely, to
reflect on whether the appeal of fee-charging McKenzie Friends highlights a need to
address some long-recognised shortcomings in the support that family lawyers are
able to offer to their clients.
Law School
Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
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