THE ROLE OF SOLICITORS IN DIVORCE PROCEEDINGS*

Published date01 November 1977
AuthorMervyn Murch
Date01 November 1977
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1977.tb02448.x
THE
MODERN
LAW
REVIEW
Volume
40
November
1977
No.
6
THE
ROLE
OF
SOLICITORS IN DIVORCE
PROCEEDINGS
*
PART
I
THE
EXPERIENCE
OF
CLIENTS
“I
was walking down the boulevard one day with
my
sister
who was down for
a
week’s holiday. She said off the cuff
When are you going to get divorced?’
I
said
‘I
don’t know.’
Seeing
a
solicitor’s office,
I
said
I’ll pop
in
here ’-just the
job, just like going in the shop for
a
loaf of bread.
So
I
sees
the receptionist. She said ‘I’ll see if he can see you straight
away.’ Well, he gave me an interview straight away. Within
an hour everything was done. He told me to bring all the
gen
I
could in a couple of weeks time, which
I
did and then
we got
on
with the job.”
This was the satisfied way in which a divorcing father described
his first meeting with
a
solicitor. Yet judged by the mounting
criticism in the popular press of legal services generally, which
culminated with the setting up of the Royal Commission
on
Legal
Services, one might conclude that his experience was exceptional.
But was it? This article will report the findings of a research
project, conducted in
1973
and
1974,
which studied two groups
of divorcing parents and their reported experience of the solicitors
who represented them.
In
doing
so,
it does not attempt to assess
the technical competence of solicitors. The objective is to indicate
the divorcing parents’ general level of satisfaction with solicitors.
The first part of the article reports both quantifiable factual
information given by the parents, and their more subjective views
and opinions of the quality of their solicitors’ services using
verbatim extracts as illustrations. The second part discusses the
implications of the research finding.
This article is part of a larger research project entitled “The Circumstances
of
Families in Divorce Proceedings
which was funded
by
the Social Science Research
Council.
625
VOL.
40
(6)
1

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