Are you a family lawyer? Do you have loads of free time? My eardrums just split from the sound of hollow laughter echoing around the country.
Do you want to have LESS free time?
Do you want to spend MORE of your evenings and weekends, faffing about with longer, more cumbersome Case Management Orders? Is there nothing you like more than emailing back and forth over painstaking detail to perfect the Case Management Order and you just wish you could do more of it?
I suspect not, which is why I’m telling you two things:-
1) There is a consultation about a new Case Management Order and it runs out on 16th April
2) The proposed new Case Management Order runs to 22 pages. It has 130 paragraphs.
Now, the idea is that 80% of those paragraphs won’t apply to most cases, but you still need to delete them individually each and every time that you draft an order. And you need to dig around in the 130 paragraphs to find the bits that you want. For example, the section about whether to extend the timetable beyond 26 weeks is paragraph 120.
This is happening to us, unless as a result of the consultation, the Powers That Might Be Giants reconsider.
The only chance of that happening is if lawyers who draft these orders, or amend other people’s drafts of the orders, or who have to explain them to their clients take part in the consultation and give their views.
And if for some reason, you WANT CMOs to be three times longer than the current model then you’d better put in your view to counterbalance the one I submitted…
So please – half an hour of your time now, is going to save you about half a day per a week in the future. Like Jennifer Aniston in L’Oreal adverts, it is worth it.
https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/publications/practice-guidance-standard-family-orders/
suesspiciousminds 
… or has the time come finally for family lawyers to say to MoJu: it is not the judge’s job to restrict the leeway other judges have – it is their job – to make orders. Resolution used to have a perfectly good set of finance orders (with fooot notes to explain why a particular draft was recommended). I had been built up over 25+ years, but I suspect is now superceded.
I am sure ALC could do the same if its members wanted it.
PS some of the latest batch I’ve seen – eg on disclosure by non-parties – are plainly wrong (in law, I mean); but I don’t imagine the committee drafting the orders will take much notice if told. Mostyn J is already on record approving very publicly an order he had already drafted, which fails to take account of later Supreme Ct authority (https://dbfamilylaw.wordpress.com/2018/03/02/on-how-to-pay-and-indemnify-your-ex-spouse-for-mortgage-repayments/). Grrr
… superseded…
My own guidance principles to family court lawyers would be this.:-
If your clients are distraught parents trying to regain their own children then “Make sure they know you are on their side!”Keep reassuring them that you will fight every step of the way through every relevant court in the land to try and get their children back and above all try your very best to put a stop to any forced adoption.
If however you are one of the growing band of “Professional losers”who tell clients not to speak in court or even to wait outside the court until proceedings are finished and who then agree to give the local authority nearly everything they demand ;I can only say “hang your heads in shame” or better still hang yourselves from the nearest tree…………..
Problematic for the poor LIP who rarely has a clue as it stands now.
i notice that 7.1 still does not have DV/DA risk assessments at all let alone on both parties!
This leaves the door wide open for false allegations to be used by one party to gain an advantage and legal aid funding and screw the whole process from the get go.
I shall be emailing the President Directly on this issue.
I have emailed my response on DV/DA Dual Risk Assessments in Family Law
First Rule
Never Tamper with a Child’s Name without Written Parental Consent punishment PRISON