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Mediation, financial remedies, information provision and legal advice: the post-LASPO conundrum

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Peer-reviewed

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Type

Article

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Authors

Hitchings, Emma 
Miles, Joanna 

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.

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Keywords

legal aid, mediation, legal information, legal advice, financial remedies on divorce, family law reform

Journal Title

Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0964-9069
1469-9621

Volume Title

38

Publisher

Informa UK Limited
Sponsorship
The empirical data drawn on in this article were collected during research funded by the Nuffield Foundation, an endowed charitable trust that aims to improve social well-being in the widest sense.