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Anne Barlow, Rosemary Hunter, Janet Smithson, and Jan Ewing: Mapping Paths to Family Justice: Resolving Family Disputes in Neoliberal Times

Document Cited authorities 1 Cited in Related
AuthorJohn Eekelaar
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/jols.12147
Published date01 March 2019
Date01 March 2019
Winner of the 2018 Hart-SLSA Book Prize
MAPP ING PA THS TO F AMIL Y JUST ICE: R ESOL VING F AMIL Y
DISPUTES IN NEOLIBERAL TIMES by ANNE BARLOW, ROSEMARY
HUNTER, JANET SMITHSON, AND JAN EWING
(London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, 240 pp., £70.00)
The advent of the Coalition government of 2010 saw the emergence of
proposals that could have a drastic effect on the family law system in
England and Wales, the Ministry of Justice's Proposals for the Reform of
Legal Aid in England and Wales (2010) and the Family Justice Review
(2011). Fearful that major changes were on the way without an adequate
research basis, the authors initiated a three-year empirical study running
from 2011 to 2014, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council,
which aimed to provide empirical evidence `around the public awareness and
party experience' of what they call the three major forms of out-of-court
family dispute resolution (the `three FDRs'): mediation, solicitor negotia-
tion, and collaborative law, with a further objective of `exploring the visions,
expectations, norms and practices' of its practitioners (p. 54).
The methods used were somewhat complex. They consisted of (i) a
quantitative survey using a questionnaire to 2974 respondents drawn from a
nationally representative Omnibus Survey. From this they constructed (ii) a
sub-group of those who had been divorced or had separated from a
relationship of at least two years' duration, or were in the process of
separation (n = 315); (iii) an additional, non-representative sample from the
Legal Services Research Centre (n = 3700); (iv) qualitative interviews with
(a) parties who had experienced the three forms of FDRs drawn from the
Omnibus survey supplemented by individuals referred by practitioners (n =
95) and (b) 40 practitioners. Finally (v) eight actual FDR sessions were
recorded.
The authors' fears were fully realized by the major surgery applied to
legal aid in private family law cases in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and
Punishment of Offenders (LASPO) Act 2012, coming into effect in April
2013. This creates the immediate problem that the present playing field as
regards access to family justice, particularly for those of limited means, is
now much changed from that of their respondents, who were reporting on
their experiences between 1996 and 2013. However, they have historical
relevance insofar as they throw light on assumptions on which the changes
were based, and current relevance insofar as those forms of FDR are still
practised.
Perhaps the most interesting piece of `historical' information are the
findings that higher proportions of both the general population and of the
sub-group survey who were divorced, separated or divorcing in the Omnibus
Survey were more aware of mediation than of solicitor negotiation (pp. 71±
2) which might rebut the explanation often proffered by government at the
174
ß2018 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2018 Cardiff University Law School

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