Tag Archives: practice direction

Foolscap on the hill

Posted on February 26, 2015 by suesspiciousminds

Oh you are all going to LOVE this.

 

 

You know those lever arch files you have got in your office, that you put the Court papers in?  They are too big. You are not to use them. You are very naughty.

 

Sir James Munby, President of the Family Division

 

Re L (A child) 2015

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWFC/HCJ/2015/15.html

 

The case is notionally about the refusal of the Legal Aid Agency to pay for the costs of translating a Court bundle for the father, but it has been almost a week since the last Presidential tirade, so we were long overdue.

 

Size of lever arch files

15. PD27A para 5.1 requires the bundle to be contained in an “A4 size ring binder or lever arch file” (emphasis added). Too often this requirement is ignored and the bundle is contained in a foolscap binder or lever arch file. This will not do. This requirement must be complied with. This is not some mindless pedantry. There are reasons for the stipulation, each deriving from the fact that an A4 lever arch file, although it contains as many sheets of paper, is not as tall as a foolscap lever arch file. First, a standard size bankers box can accommodate 5 A4 lever arch files, but only 4 foolscap lever arch files. Second, many judges and courts have trolleys or shelves arranged to accommodate A4 lever arch files, the purpose being to maximise the number of shelves (and thus the number of files) that can be fitted in any given space.

 

Just to confirm to you, every lever arch file that you have in your office, on your shelves, in your stationery cupboard is TOO LARGE. If you take an A4 piece of paper and lay it on the front of the bundle, the paper should exactly fit. If it doesn’t (and it won’t) it is TOO LARGE and you must not use it.

You are thinking, no, my lever arch files are right, they are just the right size. They are the same size that we’ve all been using for 25 years. Suesspicious Minds is talking about people who are using some weird new fangled ones.  I’m really not. I’m talking about the ones that you are using. They are too big. You must not use them.

Probably on pain of death.

You may wonder why Court trolleys and court cupboards and judicial cupboards have been built to the specifications of a size of lever arch file that literally nobody uses rather than, just throwing this out there – the size that literally everyone uses. I cannot resolve that mystery for you.

We then have a rant about witness bundles – you may recall before the President being outraged that people were sending witness bundles to the Court rather than physically carrying them there.

I have also referred to PD27A para 7.4 and drawn attention to what I said about it in Re W (Children) [2014] EWFC 22, para 13. PD27A para 7.4 could not be clearer but it is routinely ignored. It is bad enough when a second (witness) bundle is unnecessarily and improperly delivered to the court or the judge before the day of the hearing. It wastes the time of court staff and judges. It is even worse when – and I have had this experience myself more than once in recent weeks – the second bundle is not needed because there is no prospect of any oral evidence from witnesses; in such a case money – very often public money – is simply being wasted in the preparation of a wholly unnecessary copy bundle.

 

What is the solution? Well, it is this:-

This practice must stop and I have taken practical steps to stop it. From now on, counter-staff at court offices will be instructed to refuse to accept witness bundles, unless a judge has specifically directed that they are to be lodged, and to require whoever is trying to lodge them to take them away. If witness bundles are sent by post, or by DX or delivered by couriers who refuse to take them away, they will, unless a judge has specifically directed that they are to be lodged, be destroyed without any prior warning necessarily being given. They will not be delivered to the judge and will not be taken into the courtroom by court staff.

I’m not making this stuff up, this is actually in the judgment. This is not satire, it is real life.

I would lose any argument on Godwin’s Law if I tried to suggest that the Court would sacrificially burn bundles like some sort of totalitarian government burned books, but let’s go instead with the Americans in the 1970s who rebelled against disco by burning disco records.

Are we done on the raging against the dying of the light? Not quite.

the practice direction says 350 pages – and if you think that the President is about to say “the code is more what you’d call guidelines than rules” then it is like you’re talking gorgonzola when it’s clearly brie time baby.

 

  1. I make two final observations about PD27A, both of which bear on the crucial issue of the size of the bundle – something which is at the core of the difficulties in the present case. The first is that PD27A para 4.1 spells out the fundamental principle that:

    “The bundle shall contain copies of only those documents which are relevant to the hearing and which it is necessary for the court to read or which will actually be referred to during the hearing (emphasis added).”

    In other words, there is a double requirement to be satisfied before any document is included in the bundle: it must be relevant and it must be a document which will used, in the sense that it will either be read or referred to. This principle is reinforced by the list of documents which PD27A para 4.1 states “must not be included in the bundle unless specifically directed by the court”.

  2. The other observation is the desirability of documents being, to adopt the language of PD27A para 4.4, “as short and succinct as possible”. This is a topic I dealt with in both my second and my third View from the President’s Chambers: [2013] Fam Law 680, [2013] Fam Law 816. In relation to both local authority documents and expert reports, I made the point that they should be succinct, focused and analytical though also, of course, evidence-based. In relation to expert’s reports I said ([2013] Fam Law 816, 820):

    “there is no reason why case management judges should not, if appropriate, specify the maximum length of an expert’s report. The courts have for some time been doing so in relation to witness statements and skeleton arguments. So, why not for expert’s reports? Many expert’s reports, I suspect, require no more than (say) 25 or perhaps 50 pages, if that. Here, as elsewhere, the case management judge must have regard to the overriding objective and must confine the expert to what is necessary.”

  3. As that makes clear, the approach is not confined to an expert’s report. There is, in my judgment, no reason why case management judges should not, if appropriate, specify the maximum length of a skeleton argument, a witness statement, a local authority’s assessment, an expert’s report or, indeed, any other document prepared for the proceedings which will be included in the bundle. I would encourage judges to do so. Too many documents are still too long, often far too long, not least having regard to the 350 page bundle limit. I recently tried a care case where a psychologist’s report ran to some 150 pages. In the present case the bundle includes no fewer than 131 pages of witness statements by the mother. Another problem is created by unnecessary repetition, for example where the second witness statement reproduces all or most of the first before proceeding to add the more recent material, or where much of the detail in a lengthy assessment is reproduced, sometimes almost word for word, by the assessor in a subsequent witness statement: see again, for a recent example, Re A (A Child) [2015] EWFC 11.
  4. This endemic failure of the professions to comply with PD27A must end, and it must end now. Fifteen years of default are enough. From now on:i) Defaulters can have no complaint if they are exposed, and they should expect to be exposed, to public condemnation in judgments in which they are named.

    ii) Defaulters may find themselves exposed to financial penalties of the kind referred to by Mostyn J in J v J.

    iii) Defaulters may find themselves exposed to the sanction meted out by Holman J in Seagrove v Sullivan.

    The professions need to recognise that enough is enough. It is no use the court continuing feebly to issue empty threats. From now on delinquents can expect to find themselves subject to effective sanctions, including but not limited to those I have already mentioned. If, despite this final wake-up call, matters do not improve I may be driven to consider setting up the special delinquents’ court suggested by Mostyn J.

  5. I make clear that PD27A has nothing to do with judicial amour-propre, nor is its purpose to make the lives of the judges easier. On the contrary, as I observed in Re X and Y, it is simply a reflection of the ever increasing burdens being imposed upon judges at all levels in the family justice system. I continued (paras 5-6):

    “5 … The purpose of all this is to ensure that the judge can embark upon the necessary pre-reading in a structured and focused way, making the best and most efficient use of limited time, so that when the case is actually called on in court everyone can proceed immediately to the heart of the matter, without the need for any substantial opening and with everyone focusing upon the previously identified issues. The objective is to shorten the length of hearings and thereby to increase the ‘throughput’ of the family courts – with the ultimate objective of bringing down waiting times and reducing delay.

    6 But these wholly desirable objects – wholly desirable in the public interest and in the interests of litigants generally – are imperilled whenever there is significant non-compliance with the Practice Direction …”

  6. The judges of the Family Division and the Family Court have had enough. The professions have been warned.

I mean, this doesn’t actually say that offenders will be put in stocks and pelted with rancid fruit, but it says “name and shame”, “making costs orders”  “having a judge tell you go away, agree 350 pages only and don’t come in with any more” and “setting up a special Court to deal with people who break the practice directions”

If you are going before the President with a big bundle, in a big lever arch file, and you’ve already DXed the witness bundle to the Court, don’t wear your best suit is what I’m saying. Or go, but have your Dry Cleaner on speed-dial.

 

Back to the actual issue – in this case father was Slovenian and didn’t speak English. These were care proceedings, so he might lose his child. The Court bundle was 581 pages (naughty naughty). The costs of translation worked out to be £23,000 and the Legal Aid Agency said no. Including this gem

 

This application is refused as it is not considered the expenditure is necessary or justified. It is accepted that if the client cannot speak or read English he does need to understand the evidence. However, it is very unlikely indeed that he will actually to read such a large volume of documentation. Further, unless the client is a lawyer or has some experience of the work done by child professionals, I cannot see that a verbatim translation would be of any real benefit to him. If the client were an English speaker, would you consider it essential that he was provided with a copy of the Court bundle?

 

Erm, well yes, I would.  And I’d suggest that article 6 does too

The applicant must have a real opportunity to present his or her case or challenge the case against them. This will require access to an opponent’s submissions, procedural equality and generally requires access to evidence relied on by the other party and an oral hearing.

 

Clearly £23,000 is a lot of money, particularly when the Judge felt that the bundle was over-inflated. So he trimmed it to essential documents

In my judgment it is “necessary” for K to be able to read in his own language those documents, or parts of documents, which will enable him to understand the central essence of the local authority’s case or which relate or refer specifically to him. The remaining documents need only to be summarised for him in his own language.

[listing them]

In short, it is necessary for K to see in translation, either in whole or in part, only 51 pages. The contrast with the 591 pages originally identified for translation, and even with the more modest total of 246 pages subsequently identified, is striking.

 

  1. Plainly it is necessary for K to understand the case as a whole and to be aware of the important substance – not the fine detail – of the various other witness statements, reports and assessments. As proposed by the LAA, this necessitates the preparation by K’s solicitor of a summary. That summary, if it confines itself, as in my judgment it should, to matters of substance rather than fine detail, need be no more than (say) 30 pages in all.
  2. The point is made that between now and the final hearing various other documents will be served. If the same approach is applied as that which I have set out above, and in my judgment it should be, I would expect that it will be necessary for K to see only a modest number of additional pages in translation. The remainder can be summarised at probably quite short length.

 

And ending with another telling off – sorry, a plea for restraint

 

  1. I end with yet another plea for restraint in the expenditure of public funds. Public funds, whether those under the control of the LAA or those under the control of other public bodies, are limited, and likely in future to reduce rather than increase. It is essential that such public funds as are available for funding litigation in the Family Court and the Family Division are carefully husbanded and properly applied. It is no good complaining that public funds are available only for X and not for Y if money available for X is being squandered. Money should be spent only on what is “necessary” to enable the court to deal with the proceedings “justly”. If a task is not “necessary” – if it is unnecessary – why should litigants or their professional advisers expect public money to be made available? They cannot and they should not. Proper compliance with PD27A and, in particular, strict adherence to the bundle page limit, is an essential tool in the struggle to control the costs of family litigation

 

I am off for a final hearing now, with lever arch files that are too large. Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye.

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Letters of Destruction

Posted on February 1, 2013 by suesspiciousminds

 

You may well have heard that the new guidance on the instruction of experts came into force today.  If it is actually enforced, it will significantly reduce the number of experts and at the same time significantly increase the amount of preparatory work prior to requesting the involvement of an expert.

 

The Ministry of Justice published a jolly and triumphal press release about it, here

 

http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/media/media-releases/2013/tighter-rules-introduced-on-expert-evidence-family-cases

 

“New rules come into force today which will mean judges can streamline proceedings in family courts by reducing the number of expert witnesses who have to give evidence.

Up to now, evidence from experts including psychologists, doctors and others would be heard if it was “reasonably required”. Now the judge will apply a tougher test and only allow the evidence if it is “necessary”.

The President of the Family Division, Sir James Munby, said:

“There is no question of families being denied the chance to call evidence they need to support their case or being denied a fair hearing. But the new test gives judges more control over expert evidence in family proceedings. The rule change gives family judges the means to make robust case management decisions to make sure the expert evidence is focused and relevant.”

“ This change underlines the key role of the court in determining what expert evidence it requires to help it reach the decisions in a case.

“This change is a vital component of the active judicial case management that will be needed to prepare the ground for the new Single Family Court, due to come into being in April 2014.”

The rules substitute a new Part 25 (Experts and Assessors) into the Family Procedure Rules and will apply to existing proceedings as well as those started after today’s date.

In addition, controlling the use of expert evidence has been added to Rule 1.4 of the Family Procedure Rules governing active case management.

The key changes to the existing Part 25 include:

  • a change to the test for permission to put expert evidence before the court from ‘reasonably required’ to ‘necessary’.
  • a list of factors to which the court is to have regard in reaching a decision whether to give permission, including the impact on the timetable and conduct of the proceedings and the cost of the expert evidence. Additional factors are specified in proceedings involving children. These include what other expert evidence is available, including any obtained before the start of proceedings, and whether the evidence could be obtained from another source, such as one of the parties or professionals already involved in the case;
  • in proceedings involving children, an application for permission to instruct an expert should state the questions which the expert is required to answer and, where permission is granted, the court will give directions specifying the questions that are to be put to the expert.”

 

 

I was interested in the very last bit  – the Court approving the questions and setting them out in the order approving the instruction, because I wasn’t entirely sure that this claim was actually delivered in the changes, so have pressed a little further, and found that it IS, if the practice direction is followed  (yeah, right) :-

 

 

http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/Resources/JCO/Documents/Practice%20Directions/family-div-procedure-rules-2010-practice-directions-amendments-consolidated-04122012.pdf 

 

 

 

Well, it does seem, that if the Practice Direction is followed (ha!)  then rather than coming to Court with a name of an expert and some timescales, there should be a proper application, accompanied by a draft order [my underlining]

 

3.11 FPR 25.7(2)(b) provides that a draft of the order giving the court’s permission as mentioned in FPR 25.4 is to be attached to the application for the court’s permission. That draft order must set out the following matters—

a) the issues in the proceedings to which the expert evidence is to relate and which the court is to identify; b) the questions relating to the issues in the case which the expert is to answer and which the court is to approve ensuring that they

(i) are within the ambit of the expert’s area of expertise;

(ii) do not contain unnecessary or irrelevant detail;

 

(iii) are kept to a manageable number and are clear, focused and direct; c) the party who is responsible for drafting the letter of instruction and providing

the documents to the expert; d) the timetable within which the report is to be prepared, filed and served; e) the disclosure of the report to the parties and to any other expert; f) the organisation of, preparation for and conduct of any experts’ discussion

(see Practice Direction 25E – Discussions between Experts in Family Proceedings); g) the preparation of a statement of agreement and disagreement by the experts following an experts’ discussion; h) making available to the court at an early opportunity the expert reports in electronic form;

i)                    the attendance of the expert at court to give oral evidence (alternatively, the expert giving his or her evidence in writing or remotely by video link), whether at or for the Final Hearing or another hearing; unless agreement about the opinions given by the expert is reached at or before the Issues Resolution Hearing (“IRH”) or, if no IRH is to be held, by a date specified by the court prior to the hearing at which the expert is to give oral evidence

 

 

 

 

And then also, it appear that the party seeking the instruction should send the draft order and questions in to the Court in advance of the hearing

 

Asking the court to settle the letter of instruction to a single joint expert

6.1 Where possible, the written request for the court to consider the letter of instruction referred to in rule 25.12(2) should be set out in an e-mail to the court and copied by e-mail to the other instructing parties. The request should be sent to the relevant court or (by prior arrangement only) directly to the judge dealing with the proceedings. In the magistrates’ court, the request should be sent to the relevant court or (by prior arrangement only) to any district judge (magistrates’ courts ) hearing the proceedings (and copied to the legal adviser) or to the legal adviser. The court will settle the letter of instruction, usually without a hearing to avoid delay; and will send (where practicable, by e-mail) the settled letter to the lead solicitor for transmission forthwith to the expert, and copy it to the other instructing parties for information.

 

 

 

 

Well, my first cynical take on this is that this simply won’t happen. There’s quite a lot of this that was already in the Practice Direction on Experts which everyone cheerfully ignored. It is that traditional Practice Direction stance of rather than making two or three solid suggestions that everyone can follow, that you introduce a blizzard of utterly unworkable schemes all at once to the point where everyone takes one look at it and concludes that it is best to just pretend the whole thing doesn’t exist.

 

If it IS going to happen, and that the Judge refuses any expert assessment where the request is not Practice Direction compliant  [and that really depends on whether they are being sternly told behind the scenes that this is what they must do], then we are going to end up with an awful lot of adjourned CMCs, where we have to come back to Court and do it all again, only this time with reams of paperwork.

 [If a party seeks an expert assessment, and doesn’t come with all of the paperwork and the CMC has to be adjourned, are they at risk of costs orders? Yet another reason for ducking being the lead on any assessment or proposed assessment] 

If it IS going to happen, two major practice points arise. Firstly, the advocates meeting before the CMC would need to be happening much earlier than the two working days prior that it currently is  (which in reality will just mean a later CMC).  Secondly, whichever of the two parents lawyers decides to be the lead on the instruction of an expert, is going to have a huge amount of work in organising that instruction, far far more than at present, and their profitability (ha!) in the case probably immediately goes down the Swanee river.

 

So, if you are only looking for one expert, expect to see some quarrels at the advocates meeting about whether mother or father’s team should be the lead; as neither of them will really want to take on this burden.  

 

[I also expect that counsel attending these advocates meetings will regularly find in their brief “under no circumstances agree to us being the lead on the expert”   – we squabble about ‘who has to be the lead’ now, when very little is involved, but this is now a massive volume of work]

 

 

This may, cynically, be the way that the Government intend to reduce the number of experts – it hasn’t been possible to get the Courts to refuse assessments  (being that they tend to follow the line of the Court of Appeal, which has been very pro-second-opinion), so they will just make it very very unattractive for those representing parents to actually make the applications.

 

 

So, watch this space for the first appeal from a Court who refuse an expert assessment because this Practice Direction has not been complied with.

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Practice directions make perfect?

Posted on October 5, 2012 by suesspiciousminds

 

Gosh, this is an insanely bloggy week.  Some consultation documents for new family law practice directions have flitted across my inbox today. I read them, so you don’t have to…

 

There are three big ones

 

One on experts pre-proceedings, which is obviously going to become more and more pertinent as the Government move the goalposts to artificially reduce the timescales for Court proceedings , sorry ‘shift the assessment process to pre-proceedings’.   It seems to me eminently sensible – there should be a proper LOI, documents shown to the expert should be particularised, and the expert should be told that they are to treat themselves and the assessment in exactly the same way as if it were being done within proceedings. 

 

 

One on the Official Solicitor, which is jawdropping.

 

1.1             The court will investigate as soon as possible any issue as to whether an adult party or intended party to family proceedings lacks capacity (within the meaning of the Mental Capacity Act 2005) to conduct the proceedings. An adult who lacks capacity to act as a party to the proceedings is a protected party and must have a litigation friend to conduct the proceedings on their behalf. The expectation of the Official Solicitor is that the Official Solicitor will only be invited to act for the protected party as litigation friend if there is no other person suitable or willing to act.

1.2    Any issue as to the capacity of an adult to conduct the proceedings must be determined before the court gives any directions relevant to that adult’s role in the proceedings.

 

We all know that this has been the direction of travel for the Official Solicitor for some time – they simply can’t cope with the volume of cases that have come their way. But this is a recognition in a Practice Direction that for most cases, a person lacking capacity will have to instruct solicitors through a friend or member of their family.

 

No prospect for difficulties there.  There’s never anything massively sensitive within care proceedings about an adult that might not be appropriate to share with their family member. There’s never any conflict between family members and any shifting allegiances or falling out. And there’s never any conflict of interest between say a mother who wants to fight for her child, and the grandmother who is now instructing the mother’s representatives but who actually wants the child to live with her (grandmother) rather than the mother.

 

I can see that in some quarters, John Hemming MP for one, it might be thought desirable to take the Official Solicitor out of the picture, and have the family help the parent to give instructions to a solicitor, rather than have some remote figure of the State make those decisions.  I have some sympathy with that, and think that it is a perfectly legitimate subject for debate and if it is after scrutiny found to be BETTER to have the family do it than the State, then make the change.

 

 But what’s happening here is a dramatic shift in public policy from “where a person is incapable of instructing a solicitor, someone independent should represent their best interests” to  “anyone suitable in the family can instruct a solicitor on the parents behalf”,   not as a result of debate, or research, or analysis, but because the current workload is too much.

 

Just as we massively scaled down the role of Guardians because CAFCASS was overstretched  (and look what that did – ushered in an era of getting three or four experts on every case, delaying and obfuscating and costing the country), we’re making the same error here.  Instead of properly resourcing the Official Solicitor, we’re just abandoning the principle.

 

 

I am mystified as to what a parent’s representative is supposed to do, faced with a capacity certificate saying the parent can’t give instructions, and two competing people who want to be the litigation friend.  The solicitor can’t chose, the client can’t chose. How do you resolve that?  What if the papers you’ve seen show that the person being put forward as the litigation friend failed to protect the client as a child and is largely responsible for the mess the client now finds themselves in as an adult?

 

 

 

The third one is on the instruction of experts within proceedings. Everyone follows the current practice direction on experts slavishly, as we know, so a fresh one is bound to fix any problems.

 

Here’s the gist of it – try to go for single jointly agreed experts rather than going off to get one each, as if we were in 1980s civil litigation.

 

 Well, we already do. Ah, but now they have an acronym  SJE  (Single Joint Expert) so that is going to make all the difference.

 

The Practice Direction does clarify that telling a prospective expert something at all about the case so that they can (a) tell you whether it is the sort of thing they can do (b) when they can do it by and (c) how much they would like to be paid for it, knowing full well that the estimate they give is subject to the whim of the LSC, is definitely not a contempt of Court.

 

[That is of course, helpful – but given that the Practice Direction is not in force yet, raises the unfortunate spectre that if it is necessary to have a change in law to make sure that doing that WON’T be a contempt of court in the future, that it sort of is now?]

 

And then what will be necessary in the application for an expert – underlining is mine.

 

an application or the court’s permission to call an expert or put in evidence an expert’s report, for an expert to be instructed or for the child to be medically or psychiatrically examined or otherwise assessed for the purpose of obtaining expert evidence for use in the proceedings must state-—

(a)    the discipline, qualifications and expertise of the expert (by way of C.V. where possible);

(b)    the expert’s availability to undertake the work;

(c)     the timetable for the report;

(d)    the responsibility for instruction;

(e)    whether the expert evidence can properly be obtained by only one party (for example, on behalf of the child);

(f)      why the expert evidence proposed cannot properlybe given by an officer of the service, Welsh family proceedings officer  or the local authority (social services undertaking a core assessment) in accordance with their respective statutory duties or any other party to the proceedings or an expert already instructed in the proceedings;

(g)    the likely cost of the report on an hourly or other charging basis;

(h)    the proposed apportionment (at least in the first instance) of any jointly instructed expert’s fee; when it is to be paid;  and, if applicable, whether public funding has been approved.

 

 

And then what is to go into the order – note that it is going to be necessary to append the questions so that the Court can determine that they are kept to a manageable number and are clear and focussed.  That’s good news for solicitors, since it means an end to the interminable tedium of back and forth emailing about questions and the questions being settled by counsel at Court.

 

I think that this is a GOOD thing.  It will mean that CMC’s will take substantially more court time than previously, as the questions will have to be drafted before an order can be lodged.

 

The terms of the draft order to be attached to the application for the court’s permission

3.8    FPR 25.7 provides that a draft of the order giving the court’s permission mentioned in FPR 25.4 is to be attached to the application for the court’s permission. That draft order must set out the following matters—

a)      the issues in the proceedings to which the expert evidence is to relate and which the court is to identify;

b)      the questions relating to the issues in the case which the expert is to answer and which the court is to approve ensuring that they

(i) are within the ambit of the expert’s area of expertise;

(ii) do not contain unnecessary or irrelevant detail;

(iii) are kept to a manageable number and are clear, focused and direct;

c)      the party who is responsible for drafting the letter of instruction and providing the documents to the expert;

d)      the timetable within which the report is to be prepared, filed and served;

e)      the disclosure of the report to the parties and to any other expert;

f)       the organisation of, preparation for and conduct of any experts’ discussion (see Practice Direction 25E – Discussions between Experts in Family Proceedings);

g)      the preparation of a statement of agreement and disagreement by the experts following an experts’ discussion;

h)      making available to the court at an early opportunity the expert reports in electronic form;

i)        the attendance of the expert at court to give oral evidence (alternatively, the expert giving his or her evidence in writing or remotely by video link), whether at or for the Final Hearing or another hearing; unless agreement about the opinions given by the expert is reached at or before the Issues Resolution Hearing (“IRH”) or, if no IRH is to be held, by a date specified by the court prior to the hearing at which the expert is to give oral evidence.

 

 

 

I think the two on experts are fine, and the one on the representation of vulnerable adults who lack capacity is awful.

 

It looks as though the plan is for these Practice Directions to come in some time before the end of this year. Sadly, the consultation process is over before I ever saw the documents, such is life. I doubt my snarky mutterings would have made any difference anyway.

 

And in the words of Meat Loaf – two out of three ain’t bad.

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Mis-practice direction – how not to write a letter of instruction

Posted on September 10, 2012 by suesspiciousminds

It has been plain to me for a number of years that alongside the official Practice Direction on Instructing Experts http://www.familylaw.co.uk/system/uploads/attachments/0001/8873/FPR_PD25A.pdf

there must also be a secret set of rules to follow when constructing a letter of instruction that goes to at least half of the parties, in order to produce the monstrosities that we end up with,  but which is not otherwise available.

[Just like the secret special snooker words to Lady in Red…  “a cut as thin as a thong”]

After exhaustive digging and research, and aided by Indiana Jones, Batman the world’s greatest detective,  the Famous Five, Nicholas Cage’s character in that National Treasure film, and Chunk out of the Goonies, I have found it, and here it is.  Unselfishly, I am prepared to share it, so that we all understand how those masterful LOIs really come into being.

Now we all know…

Constructing a Letter of Instruction in Family Proceedings –

a Mis-Practice Direction

1. Make it long. If you’ve asked less than twelve questions, you are doing it wrong. If less than fifteen, you’re still a bit of a lightweight, frankly. Heck, I could do seven questions in a Letter of Instruction just asking for a DNA test, what’s wrong with you? Are you even trying?

2. Ensure that you have at least two nested questions, ideally with six or seven sub-clauses in each. Then you can confidently say that ‘well, we only added two questions’ and get fourteen different things asked

3. If there is a bush, make sure to beat around it.

4. On no account ask a straight question. If you ask a straight question (like, for example “can the parent provide this child with good enough care, now or in the next six months?” ) the expert might give a straight answer, and then where would we all be? Think of the poor mug who has to cross-examine the expert if there’s a straight question and a straight answer. The purpose of the Letter of Instruction is to obfuscate, not illuminate, and to ensure that you get a report which has something for everyone, rather than one clear conclusion.  Your role model here should be Sir Humphrey Appleby.

5. Don’t be afraid to ask the same question again, by subtly changing the words and having it two or three questions further down. If the expert answers them both the same, then you shrug and say “oh well”, but if there are two different items, well, then you have inconsistency, and have topics for cross-examination.

6. If you do encounter a bush, it is essential that you beat around it.

7. Make sure you put at least one question in that is outside the expert’s area. For example, when dealing with a psychiatrist ask them about the mother’s parenting ability or the quality of contact. If an independent social worker, ask them about post traumatic stress disorder. If they give you an answer you like, hooray – if they don’t, you can cross-examine about how they’ve strayed outside their expertise.     [A particular favourite was a draft LOI to a psychologist which contained only questions for a psychiatrist and none on topic. I actually did see this draft]

8. Ensure that the cost section is written at such length and in such impenetrable detail that even a forensic accountant married to a director of the LSC would only have a vague grasp on what is intended. On no account tell the expert the truth, that you don’t know how much they will get paid, or when, and that no amount of chasing or complaining will make the LSC stump up any cash. The cash will simply fall from a branch on the LSC money tree when it is ripe and ready to fall, and not before. You cannot shake that tree.

9. Always try to fundamentally misunderstand attachment theory – a particularly good way is to ask whether the child’s primary attachment is to an adult they don’t live with and haven’t done for over a year, or whether the parent is attached to the child.  In fact, just assume that attachment is in any way relevant to the decision the Court has to take, and you’re half way there.

10. If you have a question for the expert which is really just a rambling theory that you might potentially stick in submissions, but you can put a question mark on the end of it, put it in anyway.  Anything with a ? at the end of it must be a question, by definition. We don’t put ? at the end of long rambling assertions, do we?

11. Feel free to set out in mindbendingly tedious detail, everything that the expert is inevitably going to cover in their assessment, but spell it out for them as if they had never done an assessment before. This couples ideally with the requirement for a nested question.

12. Feel free to ignore the standard of proof that we work towards, and pepper the questions with “is it possible?” “can it be excluded that” or “can we be certain that?” .    In particular, don’t worry that something like Ehler Danloss syndrome affects only one in a hundred thousand people, if it potentially explains the injuries, then the child is bound to have it, and you must insist on the expert testing for it or ruling it out as a possibility. No matter how expensive, time-consuming or intrusive the testing, it has to be done, so that the remote possibility can be excluded.

13. Always end with “and any other matters you consider relevant and important”  because the expert would never, ever, ever tell you something earth-shatteringly important if it didn’t absolutely fall within your already sprawling list of questions.

[If anyone can lay their hands on the fake practice direction, I’m sure written by a judge, which sets out the unwritten laws that people must be following in order to produce  the court bundles that he was seeing – with stuff like “ensure that any individual document is stapled to another document unrelated to it, with a staple that will pierce the fingers of anyone who tries to remove it” , I’d be very grateful and I’ll stick a link to it here, as that was what inspired this]

Thank you to Chunk for his detective work. [Yes, that is just a gratuitous attempt to crowbar in a Goonies picture. You guys! Hey, you guys!]

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