Mediation, financial remedies, information provision and legal advice: the post-LASPO conundrum
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Authors
Hitchings, Emma
Miles, Joanna
Publication Date
2016-04-02Journal Title
Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law
ISSN
0964-9069
Publisher
Informa UK Limited
Volume
38
Issue
2
Pages
175-195
Language
English
Type
Article
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Hitchings, E., & Miles, J. (2016). Mediation, financial remedies, information provision and legal advice: the post-LASPO conundrum. Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law, 38 (2), 175-195. https://doi.org/10.1080/09649069.2016.1156888
Abstract
The near-total collapse in numbers of solicitors providing legal advice
and assistance to publicly-funded clients attempting to settle private
family law issues through mediation since the legal aid reforms
implemented in 2013 raises important questions about how, if at all,
clients in mediation can receive legal information and advice other
than from lawyers in financial cases following divorce. This article
explores, in a preliminary way, this aspect of mediation practice,
drawing on small-scale qualitative data from a study conducted
shortly prior to the legal aid reforms concerning the settlement
of such cases. It explores how mediators then approached their
(permissible) function of providing clients with legal information and
how they dealt with cases where they felt that the proposed outcome
was particularly unfair to one party or unlikely to be endorsed by a
court, and asks how mediation practice – and legal practice – may
come under pressure to change in this brave new world.
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09649069.2016.1156888
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/253643
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