Professionals and partisans: lessons for family lawyers from a study of fee-charging McKenzie Friends

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 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.