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Family fortunes

05 February 2020 / David Burrows
Issue: 7873 / Categories: Features
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David Burrows identifies some familiar hot topics ripe for reform in 2020
  • Clarity of law and legal aid helps to approach a fair trial.
  • Secrecy: still a question in the family courts.

Around the turn of 2018–19 I speculated on what I would do if I ruled the family law world. I started from recognition that opaque—or badly drafted—law is injustice in itself, and ended with a plea for legal aid (see ‘Fixing family law: a wish list’, 169 NLJ 7823, p7). I identified eight further topics alongside these two. Family law reform should include, I suggested:

  • Clarity of law, for lack of clarity in law denies a fair trial.
  • Marriage laws: divorce law reform is important; but so too is the need for the law of marriage to be defined to fit 21st century secular and mixed religion society.
  • Child law procedure: how can a child know what rights he or she has when child law procedure is so complex?
  • Child Support Act 1991 with all its amendments
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NEWS
Ceri Morgan, knowledge counsel at Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer LLP, analyses the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Johnson v FirstRand Bank Ltd, which reshapes the law of fiduciary relationships and common law bribery
The boundaries of media access in family law are scrutinised by Nicholas Dobson in NLJ this week
Reflecting on personal experience, Professor Graham Zellick KC, Senior Master of the Bench and former Reader of the Middle Temple, questions the unchecked power of parliamentary privilege
Geoff Dover, managing director at Heirloom Fair Legal, sets out a blueprint for ethical litigation funding in the wake of high-profile law firm collapses
James Grice, head of innovation and AI at Lawfront, explores how artificial intelligence is transforming the legal sector
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