A colleague sent me this interesting looking article on the increasing use of AI in US Courts by pro se litigants (that’s litigants in person or people without lawyers to UK lawyers and normal humans respectively):

Access to Justice in the Age of AI:Evidence from U.S. Federal Courts

I confess, because screens, the internet and social media have rotted my brain and destroyed my concentration span*, I haven’t read it in full, but it is on my ‘read it properly soon’ reading list, and it chimes with what I think we are all seeing on the ground in our own practices over here. The immediate response from colleagues who were cc’d was that they are definitely seeing a proliferation of obviously or apparently AI generated materials from litigants in person – and also sometimes from lawyers. This of course is not news, but the pace of change and the early signs of its real life impact on efficiency and justice is alarming.

Yes of course, AI is here to stay and it is sometimes (maybe often) helpful. But not always. And I am increasingly worried that when it is weilded by those without legal understanding, without an appreciation of its limitation of AI, and without an understanding of the expectations around AI use, or the risks and potential consequences of inappropriate use of AI or of reliance on its unhelpful output – it is not a force for good. I worry that rather than increasing access to justice it will create only an illusion of this, but in fact will generate worse outcomes for litigants and will generally increase the pressure and workload under which our justice system and our judges are already labouring. That’s the grey goo. Clogging up the system.

Statistics from Cafcass for the year to date (up to end April 26) show a stark and worrying trend over the last year. I’d be happy to bet a Solero** on that trend being, at least in part, derived from AI ‘assisted’ litigants. Of course, since we don’t really do proper statistics in the Family Court we’ll never know and I need never pay out on that bet, but it’s a reasonable hunch I think – at least consistent with the biggest uptick being in categories of case where there are the highest numbers of litigants in person (private law).

Interestingly, those stats are even more marked than the same picture for ytd up to end Mar 26 (no longer on Cafcass website but I happen to have downloaded this last month for a talk). I’m no statistician, but can’t help but notice that was was an 8.2% increase in the number of private law cases in March is now a stonking 15.9%.

What is driving that? What will it mean for case duration and waiting times? If a chunk of these new cases are driven by AI, will it also mean that those cases will be more….treacly? The emergent sense is very much that in many cases AI causes LiPs to produce verbose but ultimately unhelpful material, that consumes time and energy and distracts everyone from the task at hand to nobody’s advantage. It does not bode well.

Of course, it won’t all be AI driven, but I confess I’m not sure what else IS driving such a notable rate of increase of new apps. Could it be cost of living / economic issues? Or an increase in returners coming back to court after an order has failed? (if so, one hopes that does not include families returning to court after being through the Pathfinder process – it would be helpful to know one way or the other). Answers on a postcard please!

In more positive AI related news, this simplified judgment seems like a great use of AI:

Make it simple! Make it clear! Using AI to improve clarity and understanding of a judgment

I know from experience that when it comes to simplifying documents for those who need an easy read version, the aphorism ‘I didn’t have time to write a short one’ is always apt.

On a related note, I see that the BSB have issued guidance on use of AI by barristers, which is well worth a read. A consultation by the Civil Procedure Rules Cttee on the use of AI has just closed (although it didn’t cover use by LiPs), and the use of AI in Family Courts will most certainly be on the agenda at the Family Procedure Rule Committee in coming months (see March Mins), though whether such a committee can, with the best will in the world, be nimble enough to catch up or keep up with the pace of change is unclear.

Sliding neatly across from one set of Rule Committee Minutes to the next, and to the topic of QLRs appointed to ask questions on behalf of litigants in person who are prohibited from asking questions themselves, the April minutes of the Rules Committee make for alarming reading on a number of levels. The changes to the statutory guidance proposed, the implied and explicit reasons such changes are thought necessary and the problems under discussion in that meeting suggest that all is not well with the QLR system. Not well at all. Another source of ‘help’ for the litigant in person, which may sometimes not be much help at all, it seems. Particularly were it to come to pass that a QLR simply reads out the AI generated questions presented to them by the Litigant in Person, or uses their own AI generated questions…

*actually, I’m just trying to fit in some time sensitive focus-intensive work, some bank hol relaxation and a blog post today, so that is the corner I chose to cut.

** I have just been brought a solero by my lovely husband, and solero’s are on my mind, ok?

This week I thought someone was mistakenly evangelical about the new marketing idea that is corners. (corners being the little cleverly die cut pieces of card, showing a chambers’ logo that one used to wrap around the corner of a skeleton argument before stapling, to make it look *mwah* and tip top!). As it turned out, in fact the image they had shared was of a digital corner on a digital document, which was rather a cute idea. Shoulda worn my varifocals…

But just as I was mentally dummy slapping myself for that misunderstanding, there came a comment about pink tape (the thing not the blog). Which really has now fallen out of use entirely (covid being the death knell). When I started this blog in 2007 pink tape was still a recognisable thing which had meaning, at least to the lawyers who read this blog, if not necessarily all the non-lawyers. But I realise that as every year passes fewer of my colleagues actually remember getting a brief tied in pink tape, or remember the paper explosions that would occur if you were insufficiently skilled or insufficiently careful in your tying. How many remember having drawers full of the stuff, and using it for everything from tying a ponytail, to stringing up beans, to attaching it on your suitcase so you could spot it on the carousel at the airport?

When I started Pink Tape the blog, it wasn’t with a wistful look back at the olden days. It was just an everyday thing, and a colour that, for me, was a semi-political statement signifying rebellion. I married in a bright pink wedding dress (I had some vague recollection of my grandmother idly commenting that if a woman didn’t get married in white it meant she was a *gasp* ‘Jesobel’, which sounded quite exciting)… and Pink Tape had resonance for me as I found my way into the strange world of the bar…Hence ‘Pink Tape’. Post covid, the eponymous heroine of this blog has faded out of recognition. It is a meaningless title to many. And I am struck how, in the 19 years since PT began, times have changed on so many fronts.

So I have wondered if, like me (and like its namesake), Pink Tape is getting a bit past it. Even the term ‘blog’ seems a bit quaint (I bet few readers remember when such things were called weblogs). Pink Tape the (we)blog doesn’t get much exercise these days, because the pace of life now our briefs arrive by email rather than neatly contained in tightly tied pink tape is just too much. And because, well, the older you get the more time you have to spend weighing up the risks and benefits and conducting a mental impact assessment before posting (rebelliously or otherwise)…that’s a mixture of wisdom, caution and the realisation that – inexplicably – the more senior you get the more power and authority you are wielding. ‘Ranting into the void’ is not so simple when people actually listen to what you have to say. With great power comes great responsibility. And so I have learnt to use my voice more thoughtfully. Impact is good. Unintended impact not always so.

And it does appear that some people are still listening to me blathering on (have you nothing better to do?) After a rare post a couple of weeks ago (the one about QLRs, not even especially interesting in the grand scheme of things) I’ve had about five people mention that they have read it and tell me they still read Pink Tape. When I responded with surprise to the last such comment I was told that everyone reads it. The stats remind me that this is flattery rather than fact, and that ‘everyone’ is quite a select few, but I guess I’m not quite rambling into a void, and I should probably try harder to say something worth reading.

My eldest beanpole came in for a chat as I was pondering this blog post. He is only slightly younger than Pink Tape (the blog) but remembered the pink tape strewn all about the house and garden. Even he asked me ‘mum, what was it forrrrrr?’. And so I told him about the different coloured tapes, about the neatly tied bundles that would arrive in the DX, with the words ‘BRIEF TO COUNSEL’ peeking out from under the pink cross and bow. I can visualise that pull of the tape end until the bow released with a satisfying thwunk, the ceremonial opening of the brief. The brief addressed to a proper barrister. The brief with my name on it. Pink tape was a surprisingly efficient document management tool, but it was also a sort of mystical ribbon that signified to me that – even as I felt like an outsider and an imposter – I was in fact an actual, proper barrister. And that there was something special about being one. Every day a new parcel an honour to receive – a little piece of a someone’s life inside, to be treated with care and respect. Each parcel containing a pink trussed mystery – something to investigate, to put together, to pull apart, to disentangle, a story to tell, a lie to uncover and a problem to solve.

It does make me a bit wistful when I think about how things were then. I mean, mostly I miss how I was then. I had more energy and a few more f*cks left to give, I suppose. I don’t especially miss having to do the daily trog from a far flung court back to chambers for the daily paper swap before travelling home again – the interminable wait for the fax machine to send your backsheet through to your solicitor after the hearing every day, trussing today’s brief back up neatly in pink tape ready for the DX, before retrieving the waiting brief for tomorrow from your pidge, ready for an evening of prep and mild panic. I don’t miss the inability to check anything once you got to court – the panic when you had no 10p pieces to put in the payphone in the advocates room so couldn’t call your solicitor to get emergency instructions (the panic when the payphone didn’t work anyway). I’m glad that we can all WhatsApp a mate and call in a phone a friend in the toilets these days. My back is pleased that we don’t have to carry six lever arch files full of papers across the country to court every day. I’m overjoyed that I no longer have to remember to print 3 copies of everything I might possibly need before I leave for court, and that I can research an unexpected point of law at court rather than being – frankly – stuffed unless I had the Red Book in my suitcase. I’m proud that our (my) understanding of domestic abuse and trauma (and vicarious trauma) has developed at last, whilst also being alarmed at how far it had to come and how far it still has to go.

I’m less overjoyed that counsel are no longer attended at court by a solicitor or outdoor clerk most of the time. And at the realisation that computers have somehow made the drafting of orders take much longer to prepare and use many more words. And at the overwhelming volume of emails, and the overwhelming volume of papers and digital evidence. And frankly, the overwhelming volume of ever more expectations. To prepare this, and draft that, all of which will make somebody else’s life easier. But never ours. No, “counsel will do it”. I am perhaps disillusioned that the march of scientific progress has brought the bar no more relief from drudgery than it did for the 50’s housewife. We can do amazing things with technology, but at the same time, the more of it we have the more that is demanded of us…an ever increasing proliferation of stuff for us to read and to write – and all of it to be done under ever greater time pressure in service of the gods of Efficiency and Timeliness.

So yes, the phrase ‘Pink Tape’ reminds me that an awful lot has changed during my working life, and the life of this blog, but not everything for the better. One thing that has never changed since before this barrister was one, is legal aid rates. The youngster coming up behind me, if they are willing to do family legal aid work at all, must do it at the same rates of pay that I received when I started back in 2002 (and the same rates that my more senior colleagues had been working at for some years before that). To be strictly accurate, they are being paid 90% of what young me was, due to the 10% across the board austerity cuts in 2011 (that 10% has never been restored). In fact, as the President of the Family Division retires next week around 30 years since he left the bar to become a judge, I can’t help but think about the fact that those junior colleagues will be paid no more than his contemporaries before his appointment. Because those rates haven’t changed at all, not even for inflation, for 30 years. Not a typo.

Those junior barristers, those modern me’s, may not need to be skilled tape-tiers or willing to be bundle pack horses, but my god they have to do a lot more for their money than we ever did. Tasks that weren’t a thing when the funding schemes were devised are expected to be done without payment, and just because we are dedicated to our job and our clients. The dwindling value of the fee and the privilege of working these cases is expected to be enough to motivate us. Enough to pay for our childcare and our mortgages, and to allow us to take time off (unpaid) to help us manage our vicarious trauma.

So as everything changes it also stays the same. In cold hard numbers the rates of pay are unchanged. But such is the effect of 30 years inflation, that the value of our pay and the value placed upon what we do is far lower than it was, and than we should expect. Our sense of duty at the bar is our greatest strength and our greatest weakness. And it has been exploited enough.

I searched TNA Caselaw archive for judgments in the Family Court, Family Division or Court of Appeal (Civil Division) containing the keyword ‘QLR’. There were 35 matching judgments published in 2025 or 2026 (to date), spanning 34 cases (in one case there was a fact finding judgment and a welfare judgment – I treat those together). I have made a table of those judgments at the end of this post.

26 of the cases were about children and 8 were financial remedy or divorce cases. The judgments were a mixture of fact finding and final hearings, and a couple of preliminary hearings to deal with intervenors and third party assets / debt issues in financial remedy cases. They were at all tiers from DJ/ DDJ to CJ / Recorder up to DHCJ / High Court. The QLRs when appointed were sometimes for the mother/ wife and sometimes for the father / husband, occasionally both.

Cases where QLRs attended and asked questions

There were 9 cases where a QLR attended and actually asked questions (1, 2, 4 – two QLRs, 6, 9, 18, 22, 24, 25, 29, 31, 32). Where a QLR did attend, the questioning undertaken was (as would be expected) mostly of the other parent / spouse. In a few cases there was questioning of other witnesses or broader tasks undertaken: in case 1 the QLR seems to have made submissions and cross examined the Cafcass Officer, but it is unclear why that was necessary or appropriate. In case 4 the judgment refers to the QLR ‘submitting’ things on the mother’s ‘instructions’, and in case 7, the QLR didn’t ask any questions because the mother disengaged and withdrew, and the QLR is recorded as passing a note from her to the court, to the effect that the mother was ‘disinstructing my QLR’ and explicitly consented to the QLR not asking questions. In case 22 the Mother’s partner was questioned by the QLR (which seems appropriate since it was said the two had had a fight.

There is little explicit discussion of the QLR’s role or the limitations of it except in judgments 20 (where the judge asked questions in lieu of a QLR, considered it to have been fair and noted that the mother ‘says that she should have a QLR because the father has been represented and she is a Litigant in person: that is to fundamentally misunderstand the role of a QLR, which is to ask questions on behalf of someone who is prohibited from doing so’), and 34 where it appears the Father had had the benefit of a QLR at the earlier fact finding hearing, but did not need one at the final hearing (where the mother did not need to give evidence) and there the judge noted:

…it is problematic in our system that the mother has legal aid to fight her case in these proceedings and he does not. That creates a challenge for the court in trying to maintain fairness. This court has bent over backwards to try to ensure fairness, by appointing a QLR, allowing a MacKenzie friend, and giving clear instructions and explanations of what was required (for example setting them out in recitals to orders), allowing the father to make his submissions second, and so on. However it is difficult for a litigant in person and I acknowledge that. I am not sure, however that the outcome would have been different, given the evidence that was before the court

In only one case does a judge explicitly refer to the guidance which says that a judge asking questions does not count as ‘a satisfactory alternative’ to direct questioning, before going on to self-refer to the President’s 2024 judgment in Re Z (Prohibition on Cross-examination: No QLR) [2024] EWFC 22.

Cases where QLR did not appear

However, there were 12 cases where a QLR was directed but not available or not present, sometimes more than one QLR in the same case, and sometimes this occurred more than once in the same case. Three of those non-attendances or failed attempts were due to ill health or technical issues with the QLR that couldn’t obviously have been avoided (Eg 19). The rest were a mixture of the court being unable to find a QLR, unexplained non-appointment or unanticipated non-attendance – a number of cases involved a judge saying they had not been able to get to the bottom of why no QLR had attended as expected. In one case (15) a fact finding hearing was listed and adjourned twice, causing a delay of just under a year before the third attempt at a FFH was successful, leading to findings being made against the Father after the Mother had been questioned on his behalf by a QLR. That third attempt had only been able to proceed due to the diligence of the QLR who, having received the bundle only the day before the hearing, had worked all through her weekend to ensure she was ready on time. She was specifically praised for her hard work. The court doesn’t make clear who was supposed to send her the bundle, but I would guess that silence probably means it was a case of court error.

In one case (20) a mother had specifically applied for a QLR, but her application had simply not been actioned by the court, and was never put before a judge. In the end the hearing was able to proceed consensually, and in fact the judge concluded that whilst both parties considered themselves to be the victim of domestic abuse in the form of coercive and controlling behaviour from the other, on an objective view that was not the case.

In case 24 two QLRs were required. On the first attempt only one could be found, and was allocated to the husband, who subsequently went on to instruct solicitors, meaning that QLR was stood down – leaving the wife with no QLR. On the second attempt the court directed the attendance of a QLR for the wife, resulting in two QLRs attending! The husband’s QLR was discharged on arrival (presumably therefore rightly able to claim the fee for preparation and attendance, but a waste of resources nonetheless). Even on that second attempt things did not go smoothly as the QLR had only been provided with 44 pages of a large volume of papers (again, this is almost certainly a court issue), meaning the QLR needed to be given time to get up to speed before the hearing could start. In one case (28) the parties were ineligible for a QLR because the proceedings were issued prior to the commencement date of the relevant provisions (July 22). 2 QLRs were also sought but not obtained in case 30. (Other cases in which a QLR couldn’t be found, wasn’t appointed or didn’t show up were 8, 10, 11, 12, 21 33)

Difficulties with the QLR not being provided with the requisite information in advance were evident in a number of cases (in case 10 this was apparently down to the Mother’s solicitor, in case 15 (as above) the last minute provision of the bundle could have caused an adjournment, and quite possibly would have if there had not been a weekend intervening to allow the QLR to prepare in time for the following working day.

Cases where judges asked questions on behalf of a prohibited party

There were 10 cases in which the judge asked questions (3, 8, 9, 11, 14, 16, 19, 20, 28, 30) – judicial questioning was MORE FREQUENT than the questioning by QLRs which was supposed to have replaced such a practice. On one occasion the court directed the provision of written questions for the judge to ask at trial without bothering to try and obtain a QLR first (3). In case 16, where the judge asked questions for a father, the judgment sets out an apparently particularly acute difficulty with getting QLRs at all in the Newcastle area. It goes so far as to record that as a result, judges in Newcastle apparently don’t bother listing Ground Rules Hearings (which are mandatory under the FPR) because if there isn’t a QLR they serve no useful purpose and just waste resources. I have to say, that is not my view – the purpose of a ground rules hearing is far broader than simply to address QLR issues. And if there is unlikely to be assistance from a QLR then a ground rules hearing may be even more critical. The same judgment also records the judge’s particular concern about the difficulty of a judge asking questions (as did the judge in case 34).

I carefully reviewed the questions supplied by the parties. Many of the questions were irrelevant, some of them required reframing and many were related to welfare aspects of the case rather than the fact finding exercise that I had to undertake. I have to record that I found the task of asking questions of the mother and father both onerous, unnatural and difficult. Trying to draw the line between putting a party’s case fairly and straying into what might be regarded as inappropriate cross-examination by the judge is difficult. Given that fact-finds are inquisitorial in nature makes the job harder. On a practical level it is also extremely difficult to ask questions, take an accurate note of a witness’ evidence and assess the quality of their evidence. Nonetheless the child’s welfare requires us to persevere with this sub-optimal process. [my emphasis in bold]

Other solutions

In one case without a QLR (20) the court permitted the mother’s McKenzie friend to step into the breach and asked questions (this is the case where the court had failed to refer the mother’s application to a judge). In one other case the vulnerable intervenor against whom findings had been sought was discharged as an intervenor, so the need for questions to be asked on his behalf fell away – but it is difficult to see how fairness could have been achieved in that case if he had been required to participate in the fact finding hearing.

Wasted resources

Quite apart from cases where lawyers were assembled and judges and court staff scrambled for hearings that then had to adjourn as a result of a problem with a QLR (or lack of one), and near misses where a QLR was not equipped with the necessary papers, there were other cases which seemed to illustrate potential wasted resource. For instance, there were two cases where a QLR attended but the parent they were asking questions for disengaged (5 and 7). In case 7, mentioned above, where the mother disengaged with her QLR, the father’s QLR was directed to attend on day two in the hope the mother would attend for questioning but she did not so he was sent away. In several cases a prohibited party instructed their own solicitor after a direction for QLR appointment had been made (17, 23, 27). It did not always seem to be the case that the court had stood down the QLR in advance – either because they weren’t notified or didn’t act on a notification. Obviously, where a QLR has prepped and attended they should be paid for their work, and there were a couple of cases where I wasn’t sure if a QLR had done prep and been stood down before the hearing, which probably means they worked for free as they could not claim a fee for prep alone.

In case 13, a case heard by the President when a solicitor acting as a QLR for a father was subsequently instructed as his criminal solicitor – the mother objected to that. The President discharged him as a QLR, whereupon the father instructed the solicitor in the family proceedings, and he went on record as acting. This might suggest that the father was taking advantage of a ‘free lawyer’ while he could, even though he was in fact able to pay, but it isn’t the only explanation – he may have felt he had no option and have borrowed the money which he could not really afford. Or he may have belatedly realised the big difference between a QLR appointed by the court and a lawyer instructed by him). There are a couple of cases where, for whatever reason, after the imposition of a QLR on a party, they do go on to instruct a lawyer, and it is obviously really important that where they do the message that the QLR is no longer needed is effectively communicated to the court, and by the court to the QLR.

What my review of these judgments also evidences is the (legal and factual) complexity and gravity of some of the cases involving QLRs and litigants in person, and the vulnerability of multiple participants. Additionally, the communication breakdowns and difficulties coordinating the appointment of QLRs occur in combination with quite high levels of chaos on other fronts – whether through litigant behaviour, poor preparation by lawyers, non compliance with case management directions, difficulties with bundles or the health and wellbeing of participants and emerging appreciation of higher levels of vulnerability than had initially been understood. There are often issues with language and interpretation.

It wasn’t possible in these judgments to gain a sense of the nature or complexity of the questioning undertaken as it isn’t usually described. There are a couple of commendations of QLRs for their assistance and skillful questioning and adherence to the ground rules, but no further detail. The sample is probably too small to take much from it, particularly since the QLR is not always named, but with one exception the same QLR name does not appear twice. At least some of the QLRs are counsel, but it isn’t possible to match all the names with a particular online presence. There were also pro bono counsel acting on behalf of the vulnerable party in a number of cases, and a number of cases where direct access counsel were instructed at some point. Some of the cases involving a QLR or a QLR direction involved a third represented party (a child through their guardian or an intervenor) who was able to cross examine the witness in accordance with their instructions, but there was no suggestion in any judgment that this was thought to be a substitute for cross examination on behalf of the prohibited party, or that this advocate should ask the prohibited party’s questions instead of the judge (as used to sometimes happen).

Any conclusions?

As I said at the outset, there is a limit to what one can take from a sample of the 35 judgments that judges have (for whatever reason) decided to publish. They may or may not be representative. However, it is pretty striking that several years into the statutory prohibition on direct questioning, it seems still to be the case that judges are left to ask questions themselves more often than they are assisted by a QLR.

It doesn’t appear from this sample as if the problem of insufficient numbers of QLRs (which the President attempted to tackle in his 2024 judgment) has yet been resolved, even by the increase in rates implemented last year. There is some support for the notion of ‘QLR deserts’.

My own anecdotal information suggests that the inconsistency in approach to what a QLR can and cannot / should and should not be doing / asked to do is a bigger issue than appears from this sample. I am hearing frequently of cases where QLRs either try to overstep their role, or are expected to do so by judges. I anticipate we’ll see more judgments grappling with this filtering through in due course – or perhaps that the practice will begin to align more closely with the limited role described in the statutory guidance and the President’s judgment in K v P (Criminal Solicitor as Court-Appointed QLR)
[2025] EWFC 321 (case 13).

Whether we like it or not, neither the purpose nor effect of the scheme is to act as an equivalent to proper representation by a party, and if the scheme works as intended it will not provide a litigant in person with either advice or full representation. In one case (17) the judge records explaining ‘DARVO’ to the Father, along with the role of a solicitor ‘so that as a litigant in person he might avoid unwittingly assisting the case against him by virtue of his own pleadings’. Her warnings were to come to pass, even though he instructed direct access counsel to represent him very shortly before the hearing, by then he had filed a schedule of allegations against the mother and 17 statements, many of which had been prepared with the assistance of Chat GPT, leading the judge to say that ‘It is difficult to distinguish between what F says and what an algorithm tells F to say’. The court dismissed all his allegations against the mother and made findings against him, saying that

It is clear from the totality of the evidence that F has been abusive, controlling and coercive of M. He has continued that abuse through his evidence, submissions and the manner in which he has instructed his case to be run. His communications show frequent and often unjustified criticism of M and these were expanded upon in no uncertain terms by F and his witnesses. Even when M’s actions were in B’s best interests, she was not spared from question and criticism.

The judge concluded specifically that ‘F’s schedule, and indeed his case itself, amounts to DARVO. ‘ and that ‘I also consider F’s litigation conduct to be a continuation of controlling and coercive behaviour and abusive behaviour.’ Whether the father might have moderated his behaviour if he had the benefit of earlier legal advice (paid for by himself or legal aid) is impossible to know. But perhaps the mother might have been spared at least some of the further abuse perpetrated by him through the proceedings if he had…

A Post-Script – Naming conventions – a bugbear

Another important message to come out of my nerdy little survey is confirmation of my suspicions: 10 of the 26 children cases use the unimaginative ciphers ‘M’ and ‘F’ or ‘Mother’ and ‘Father’ (and a further case involving same sex parents used M1 and M2). 42% of children judgments use a naming system which renders the judgment practically indistinguishable from almost half of the other judgments published. So if, like me, you had the creeping sense that almost every flipping judgment published these days is called M v F or F v M, and if you spend your time trying to work out which M v F is being referred to – no, you are not imagining it. Even if pseudonyms is too much work, is it too much to ask for judges to give cases letters which aren’t M or F and which don’t match their actual initials? Or better still, to include a descriptive summary in parentheses: A v B (the one with the really helpful quote in) [2026] EWFC xxxx (Fam).

The cases I’m referring to

Here are the 35 judgments and citations. I’m afraid I failed to keep the URLs in a handy location and I don’t have the inclination to go and find them to hyperlink them individually, but if you cut and paste the case name and citation into the search box at TNA (here) you will get there in a click or two.

I’ve done a month now as FLBA Vice Chair (one reason for the rising tide of emails). It’s been an eye opener. There is so much work to do, at this toughest of times for the family bar. Lots of my friends and colleagues are desperate for the resumption of legal aid payments but extremely worried about recoupments of the contingency payments. The mood is as dank as the weather. There is talk of people leaving the bar altogether, people who have just had enough, who feel unheard and disrespected, Please keep an eye on your FLBA emails for information and news – and if you aren’t receiving your members emails let us know. It’s important you know what is happening on your behalf and what help we can offer.

On Friday, over a hundred of us (by my guess) attended a valedictory for Rebecca Stevens, a much loved solicitor who died much too young. A salutary reminder that life is short, but also that you should live your passion. She was a little ray of sunshine.

In between the rain and the gloom though, January and February do bring the occasional moment of watery sunshine. Those are the best days, where the cold air bites your face and the bright sky makes you blink. Later on Friday we trudged around the headland with the dog. It was slippery underfoot but cheering. Little green shoots poking out and up along the way are always a reminder that nothing is forever. Kids grow up, parents, pets and friends leave us, and life moves on to another phase. The world is spinning and the tectonic plates are shifting around us as we hyper focus on our cases. At moments we look up and realise we are in a different place and a different time. It’s disorientating. In 2026 I resolved not to have any new years resolutions, but I tell myself I will look up and around more, breathe more, plant my feet on the ground more firmly.

Fond as I am of metaphor and analogy, I can’t promise that the eternal winter is about to come to an end on the fees front, but I can forecast change and turbulence ahead in our work lives. This spring will bring a new President (and a bunch of other appointments to the senior courts), a new practice direction on bundles (oh frabjous day!), the beginning of a return to regular legal aid payments and a (long and bmppy) process of sorting out the issues around VAT, income tax and recoupment that flow from the disastrous hack. Although I don’t know what lies ahead on legal aid fees, I sense an incoming weather system.

Although that post is almost 20 years old it remains one of the all time most visited pages on this blog. Surprisingly, it remains more or less accurate (though it has a surprising number of typos and missed capitals), and it appears that it remains as needed as ever – a recent post on LinkedIn described continuing misinformation that perpetuate the idea of barristers being better or higher than solicitors. That prompted me to take another look at my old post.

I thought that I’d just give the 2007 post a bit of spit and polish, to make sure it is applicable to 2026. So here goes… (if you want to read the original post you can read that here). You will notice that I didn’t mention legal executives in my original post, I think because I was trying to keep things simple. But it seems important to add them in to this updated version, because they are one of the three types of lawyers in this legal system, and they are an important part of it too (sorry, legal exes, I know you’ve had a tough time of it lately). I’ve kept the same title, because experience tells me that it most closely matches the sort of search terms people type into google. I’ve also added a few bits of detail and some headings for ease of reading. Hopefully version 2.0 is both new and improved.

What’s the difference between a barrister and a solicitor? (actually, what’s the difference between a barrister, a solicitor and a legal executive)

Barristers, solicitors and legal executives are all lawyers, but they are different types of lawyers. There are many similarities and many differences. One is not ‘better’, more experienced or more senior than the other. They have quite different training and expertise and do different types of legal work. The system that operates in England & Wales is a ‘split’ system, where there is a division of labour between these two types of lawyers. In some countries (such as America) there is a ‘fused’ system where all lawyers can (potentially) do all things, although of course they will tend to specialise.

Training

Barristers and solicitors will all have done either a law degree or another degree followed by a one year law conversion course. Those courses will teach them the basics of the main areas of law (things like Land Law, Contract Law etc). They will all then have done a vocational course, which is focused on how to be a lawyer rather than the law. For solicitors that includes things like handling client money, litigation, whilst for barristers it is heavily focused on advocacy, Both vocational courses involve learning about court procedure. After the vocational stage solicitors will go on to do a 2 year training contract, working in a law firm under supervision, whilst barristers go on to do a one year pupillage, working in a chambers supervised by a more senior barrister (a pupil supervisor). They will only be allowed to speak in court after the first six months.

The route for legal executives is more varied. Typically a legal executive might not have a degree at all and might start out working in a law firm, and carry out their training over a number of years whilst working as a paralegal or assistant in the law firm, building up a portfolio of work and taking exams over a period of time. By the time they qualify they are often very experienced lawyers, and many of them have a particularly in depth knowledge of the area of law they specialise in. For example, there are some very knowledgeable legal executives with a real specialism in family law. This route is often chosen by those with family / caring commitments or who have for whatever reason not been able to take a traditional route into law.

Solicitors and legal executives can do extra training to add to their rights of audience, and more recently barristers have been able to do extra training to be able to carry out litigation (see below – though not many do so).

Business structure

The explanation that follows tells you about the typical arrangements for most barristers and most solicitors – but as with much in life there are often exceptions to the rule. So, barristers are (usually) self employed. Solicitors are (usually) not: they are employed or partners. Barristers don’t usually operate as partnerships or companies, and the majority trade as sole traders, but group together for economy and marketing under one roof which is called a ‘chambers’.

Because barristers within one chambers are all independent from one another they can act on different sides in the same dispute, but solicitors in the same firm can’t do this because they aren’t independent from each other and would have a conflict of interests. It is very common for a barrister in independent practice to represent one party involved in a case, and their (independent) colleague in the same chambers to represent the other, but when this happens they will have to be instructed by different solicitors firms. Legal executives will typically be employed within a firm alongside solicitors.

Advocacy and litigation

Barristers are specialist advocates or specialists in a particular area of law (or both).

Solicitors and legal executives do also specialise, and some do their own advocacy, but most solicitors are primarily litigators. This means meeting the client, working out what the case is, sorting out the paperwork, communicating with the other party’s solicitors and where necessary instructing a barrister to advise about the law or to go to court and represent the client on their behalf. (There is currently a legal issue about what tasks legal executives are allowed to do, and which bits have to be done by a solicitor, which is likely to be clarified by the Court of Appeal soon in a case called Mazur.) There are some differences between barristers, solicitors and legal executives’ rights of audience – i.e. which courts they are allowed to speak in. Barristers are allowed to speak in any court, right the way up to the Supreme Court. Solicitors are allowed to speak in the Family Court (and some in the High Court), and for Legal Executives it depends, but they can speak in most family court cases.

Barristers spend a lot of their time in court, talking to other barristers, dealing with witnesses giving evidence and addressing the Judge. Solicitors often come to court to support a barrister by taking a note or having the files to hand incase the barrister needs something. Increasingly often a barrister attends court without a solicitor. This is often more cost effective.

A barrister is often paid by the piece of work, i.e. £x to attend for this hearing and £y to draft this document. A solicitor usually bills by the hour. Barristers are usually sent to court because it’s cheaper than sending a solicitor who bills by the hour or because the barrister is more experienced at dealing with the court side of the process (or both).

A client can instruct a solicitor directly, but to instruct a barrister you usually have to first instruct a solicitor, and the solicitor will instruct a barrister for you. An exception to this is ‘direct access’ instruction, where a client can instruct a barrister directly. This is only suitable in certain types of cases and only where the client can effectively act as their own solicitor. Not all barristers accept instructions in this way and most of those who do work this way will assess in each case whether the client and the case is one where they should agree to do the job without a solicitor. In some cases, it’s really better (and actually more cost effective) to have both.

Cab rank rule

All lawyers have very similar ethical and professional rules. They are all expected to be honest, to act in their client’s best interests, but to always put their duty to the court first. One important distinction between barristers and other lawyers is a rule called the ‘cab rank rule’. The rule means that if a solicitor asks to instruct a particular barrister for their client, and that barrister is available and competent to carry out the job, they can’t say ‘no’ because they don’t like the client or their politics. This is to make sure that everybody is able to secure representation even if they are unpopular, unlikeable or look guilty. There are some exceptions when this rule doesn’t apply. One exception is that this rule doesn’t apply to direct access instructions, so a barrister is allowed to say ‘no’ if they don’t think the case or client is suitable to be worked without a solicitor. Another is when a barrister is working as an employed lawyer (for example in the Government Legal Department). Firms of solicitors (including legal executives) don’t have to apply the cab rank rule. All lawyers have rules that restrict when and how they can pull out of working for a particular client once they have agreed to act – and rules that very occasionally mean they have to stop working for a client immediately (for example they will be ‘professionally embarrassed’ and have to withdraw from the case if they can’t continue without misleading the court).

Piecework / continuity

A barrister will often – but not always – deal with a case all the way through, and the solicitor will check in with them regularly for advice and for them to oversee the case strategy. In other cases a barrister is only briefed for a particular hearing or piece of advice, and instructions might be sent each time a specific piece of work needs to be done (a hearing, a piece of drafting), so there might be different barristers dealing with a case, although the solicitor will remain responsible the whole way through. This is because a solicitor is retained by a client and is responsible for dealing with what comes up as it comes up, but a barrister cannot always be available for a client to attend a particular hearing because these dates are not known at the outset. If a barrister has been previously booked to do something else for another client on the date in question she will have to honour that first commitment, unless the first client agrees to their release (perhaps because an alternative barrister is offered that the client is happy with).

Judges

Barristers, solicitors and legal executives can become judges, although historically more judges have come from the bar than from solicitors and legal executives.

As with everything – the points above are not true all of the time, but they are generally applicable.

Teamwork

Barristers are divided up into ‘junior counsel’ and ‘senior counsel’ (also called ‘silks’ or ‘King’s Counsel’ or ‘leading counsel’). Junior counsel is any barrister who isn’t a King’s Counsel, right from the newbies to the very experienced. So, I was junior counsel until a couple of years ago, even though I’d been doing the job for 20 years (sometimes experienced juniors get called ‘senior juniors’ just to confuse you).

King’s Counsel are instructed when a case is really complex. Often – but not always – they will work with a junior, occasionally more than one junior, on a case because of the complexity and / or volume of work.

Whether or not King’s Counsel are involved, the system works best when all the lawyers on a team work together – as a team. One of the best parts of my job as King’s Counsel is working in a team with my junior and the solicitor or legal executive who is instructing me. We all have our part to play in getting a good outcome for our client, and each of us is as important as the other. The best teams and the best outcomes are produced when all the different types of lawyers respect one another’s roles and skillsets.

The best lawyers will also work constructively with lawyers from other teams, even when their cases are opposed.

Post script 24 Jan 2026 – Dispute resolution

A solicitor has helpfully suggested that perhaps not all solicitors think of themselves as ‘litigators’ these days and it has prompted me to add a little p.s. She is right I’m sure, that this is not how some solicitors view themselves, and indeed it is not even what they spend most of their time doing. In the world of family law many lawyers – whether solicitors, barristers or legal execs, consider themselves dispute resolution specialists as much as lawyers. They might be dual qualified or trained as arbitrators, mediators, collaborative lawyers, ‘private judges’ or even therapists, and solicitors in particular sometimes offer a wrap around service through their firms for families in crisis post-separation (financial advice, counselling and coaching for instance). Many family lawyers would say they are not about litigation as much as about avoiding it. But nonetheless, whenever a lawyer steers a client away from court as a way to resolve their dispute, they are doing so in the context of potential litigation (or in the shadow of the law as mediators often say), and using their knowledge and expertise about litigation to support clients through the process whether that is in litigation or pre-litigation or not. Hopefully that is a useful (further!) caveat to what I’ve said above.

There are already some lovely tributes available, some gathered together in this Gazette piece, some arriving in our inboxes from the Chairs of various associations and carrying the message from the current President of the Division Sir Andrew, and some on social media – and I am sure there will be others in coming days. I only appeared in front of Sir James once or twice, but he has been a big part of my professional life, and so I wanted to add some personal reflections of my own.

I know Sir James read Pink Tape (amongst other blogs). Sometimes he would tease me about the fact he knew exactly what I had been writing, on one occasion referring obliquely to my legal commentary in a judgment by adopting a short quote of mine. He never chided me for being – on occasion – a bit too cheeky. He took it all in good humour. He read widely and continuously and was always interested in different people’s viewpoints.

We kept in touch after his retirement. His brain was always fizzing with ideas, and he was forever researching or drafting something. He was also almost always right, whether in his judgments or his speeches or his essays published online post-retirement – although humble enough to acknowledge that no person and no system is ever right all the time. Sometimes he would ask me for my view on something, and more often I would ask him for his view. Our discussions about s12 were invigorating, but he never pulled rank. It is largely to his credit that the Law Commission belatedly decided that the could not ignore s12 when undertaking their reform project on contempt. And so it is that there is now a recommendation for the repeal of s12, finally.

Fellow barrister Sam Singer wrote today on LinkedIn about Sir James’ moral courage. She summed it up perfectly, and she included this quote from Sir James in Re B (A Child) (Disclosure) [2004] 2 FLR 142 :

That persistence and moral courage is something that every barrister should strive towards – doing what is right and saying what needs to be said, not simply taking the easy path. And the quote Sam selected has inspired and underpinned much of the work across the last decade by those of us involved in The Transparency Project. It was Sir James whose words in the ‘Italian C-Section case’ (Re P), galvanised us into action, resulting in the formation of the Project.

Before parting from the case there are two points that require to be addressed with honesty and candour. Both relate to the fact that, when this story first ‘broke’ on 1 December 2013, none of the relevant information was in the public domain in this country.

The first point is this: How can the family justice system blame the media for inaccuracy in the reporting of family cases if for whatever reason none of the relevant information has been put before the public?

The second point is, if anything, even more important. This case must surely stand as final, stark and irrefutable demonstration of the pressing need for radical changes in the way in which both the family courts and the Court of Protection approach what for shorthand I will refer to as transparency. We simply cannot go on as hitherto. Many more judgments must be published. And, as this case so very clearly demonstrates, that applies not merely to the judgments of |High Court Judges; it applies also to the judgments of Circuit Judges.

Sir James had a habit of quoting himself in his previous judgments. No doubt, because his judgments were unimprovable prose. And so, in Re P he characteristically reminded us of what he had said a few months prior in Re J:

So far as concerns the relationship between the media and the court I can only repeat what I said earlier this year in a judgment that was widely reported at the time: Re J (A Child) [2013] EWHC 2694 (Fam). I forbear from extensive citation, merely repeating at this point, so as to emphasise, three key principles (Re J, paras 37-39). First, that “It is not the role of the judge to seek to exercise any kind of editorial control over the manner in which the media reports information which it is entitled to publish”. Second, that “Comment and criticism may be ill-informed and based, it may be, on misunderstanding or misrepresentation of the facts [but the] fear of such criticism, however justified that fear may be, and however unjustified the criticism, is … not of itself a justification for prior restraint by injunction of the kind being sought here, even if the criticism is expressed in vigorous, trenchant or outspoken terms … or even in language which is crude, insulting and vulgar”. Third, that “It is no part of the function of the court exercising the jurisdiction I am being asked to apply to prevent the dissemination of material because it is defamatory … If what is published is defamatory, the remedy is an action for defamation, not an application in the Family Division for an injunction.”

And it was in Re J that Sir James said this:

In relation to the pragmatic realities, I repeat what I said in A v Ward [2010] EWHC 16 (Fam), [2010] 1 FLR 1497, para [133]:

The family lawyer’s reaction to complaints of ‘secret justice’ tends to be that the charge is unfair, that it confuses a system which is private with one which is secret. This semantic point is, I fear, more attractive to lawyers than to others. It has signally failed to gain acceptance in what Holmes J famously referred to as the “competition of the market”: Abrams v United States (1919) 250 US 616, 630. The remedy, even if it is probably doomed to only partial success, is – it must be – more transparency; putting it bluntly, letting the glare of publicity into the family courts. As I went on to say:

In short, the remedy is publicity, “more speech, not enforced silence.”

Those judgments paved the way for the decade of transparency reform that has followed. They have been my guiding light.

I once devised a whole transparency talk which was structured around a journey across Munby’s judgments, tracking the development of themes and ideas from one judgment to another and another. I did not need the judgments of any other. All of those judgments remain good law (and even Ward was restored to its rightfully approved position by the Abbasi appeals). I cannot tell you how many times I have gone back to the four judgments above for a steer on transparency, how many times I have deployed them to good effect. There are of course many, many other judgments covering similar ‘transparency’ themes in the Munby oeuvre – and each one is meticulous, compelling and unarguably correct.

There was very much more to SIr James than transparency of course, but that was the shared interest through which I came to know him best and so, for me, it is the lens through which I will remember him. And his drive for greater transparency was undoubtedly always motivated by the demand for rigour, fairness and improvement, so that the family justice system could be better, more humane, and safer (in all senses) for the families it served. Everything he did was about learning and getting things right for the best of reasons. He was demanding in leadership, but beneath it was always kindness.

The passing of Sir James will surely be felt profoundly by his own family. His passing is also a great loss for everyone in the family justice community, but there is no danger of him being forgotten. HIs legacy is huge, lawyers like me will be quoting and relying on his judgments for a long time yet, and the tectonic plates of family justice are still slowly shifting as a result of his words and actions.

If you are reading this, so long, Sir James.

But as the clock strikes midnight at the end of 2025 I will shed one hat and put on another. I will stop being the Chair of the Transparency Project, and become (as if by magic) the Vice Chair of the FLBA.

My feelings are mixed about this too. Excitement and trepidation about the FLBA, and sadness and hope about the Transparency Project. It isn’t healthy for any one organisation to have the same leader forever, so I hope that in stepping down from the TP I will also free it up to become something more than ‘Lucy’s pet project’ (it is much more than that, because it has always been very much a team effort, but that is the perception), and something more enduring. I’ll still be involved in TP, but it’s time for others to take it forward.

In the same way, I hope that new hands and eyes at the FLBA will also do that organisation some good – whilst Leslie Samuels and I have been around on the FLBA committee (and Leslie as an officer) for some years, we are both relative newcomers in comparison to the outgoing chair, James Roberts. I don’t think the members of the FLBA fully appreciate the work he has put in on their behalf over the years, and the impact that work has had, so although I am undoubtedly nothing like a clone of James (the mind boggles at such an idea), I do know that whatever Leslie and I are able to achieve during our terms of office will be based upon that solid foundation. We have much to thank James for and a lot to live up to.

Anyway, this is all very worthy. I hope that this short post finds you well, that it will go out on cue at its scheduled time and that it will find its way into your inbox whilst you are sipping a lovely drink on a very squishy sofa – whether that drink is a delightful chablis, a sloe gin, a pina colada or a hot chocolate – and that you will have had some brief respite from the onslaught of time sensitive and emotionally taxing work that we all do.

May 2026 bring you peace and contentment. Look after yourselves x

Digital data…phone downloads to be precise. Every member of the family bar has been there. Fear of your search filters filtering out the nugget of important information means that it sometimes feels easier to just ask for all data from a device within a specified time period. Except. If the person who owns that phone is under the age of 40 the likelihood is that what will be produced is a haystack of mountainous proportions, liberally sprinkled with things they don’t want other people to see and which, frankly, we don’t much want to look at either. And things which need urgent weeding or redacting. And when that happens some poor sod (usually counsel) is going to have to sift through it. After court, after bedtime, hour after hour, ticking off this chat and that subfolder, producing schedules of what is there and what isn’t. And what needs to be manually removed. Because its privileged. Or confidential. Or intimate and utterly irrelevant. It’s like a sort of weird immersion torture, sitting for hours with your stinging eyes glued to the screen, images and words describing the momentous moments, the mundane and the minutiae of someone else’s life, all flicking across your screen in a continuous blur until all sense of self and time is lost.

Quite apart from a growing worry that the wholesale downloading of phones may be a disproportionate invasion of privacy, doing things this way is also a significant burden on the lawyers. Because the judge sure isn’t going to read tens of thousands of entries or view tens of thousands of images. No, the judge is going to read the schedule counsel have prepared, or the small bundle of documents the lawyers have identified as relevant, or marked for redaction. And the work that goes on to get the thing trial ready will have been substantial and unseen. And if you are paid through legal aid (as usually 3 of four lawyers in each case are) it is also completely unpaid. Gratis. Free. Hours and hours and hours of it. Every hour spent on phone downloads is an hour you can’t spend earning. And an hour you can’t spend with your kids. And of course, it’s also done under immense time pressure. Because nobody wants to be the one who causes the trial timetable to fall over.

I felt a tiny pang of sympathy for the people responsible for publishing the Epstein files this weekend, seeing that they were being criticised for redacting the pictures, and then criticised for removal of a small number of images after publication (some of which now appear to be back, but more robustly redacted). The concern was that the pictures removed were done for sinister reasons. Who knows – I offer no view on the specifics. But it will be no surprise to family lawyers (whatever their views of the Trump government) to find that a vast body of disclosure requires redaction, or that a small number of errors will creep through, particularly when the job of redaction is done under time pressure. Just as we work to protect the privacy, identity and addresses of the vulnerable when working with phone downloads, there will have been similar work going on over the pond. And then I thought: there are probably a massive team of them and they were probably being paid, and I didn’t feel quite so sympathetic.

But that theme, that we are all desperately doggy paddling across great unmanageable oceans of too much information, lurching from one swell to the next, with our puny bodies ill equipped to keep us afloat atop the sheer volume of digital data, that theme isn’t going away. We need water to survive, but sometimes it feels as if we are all at risk of being overwhelmed by a tsunami of information, and that although there is information everywhere there is ‘not a drop to drink’, polluted as it is by fake news, AI slop or other people’s lies and dirty laundry. (I’ve re-read those last three sentences and they are so crackingly bad I’m going to leave them in, just for your entertainment. When I lose control of my own metaphors that’s a strong indicator that it’s time for a holiday – is that a meta-metaphor? An uber-metaphor?).

Anyway, I’m now officially on leave. During that time I will not be looking at the contents of other people’s phones, and will be trying to cleanse my soul of the more difficult things I have read and heard this working year. In fact I hope I won’t even be spending much time looking at my own phone and will be concentrating on the minutiae of my own family life, which I don’t do enough of.

See you in 2026.

Here is a short post by Matthew Lee – a barrister who is tracking all things AI in law so you don’t have to – about how chat GPT prompts were adduced in evidence in family proceedings, much in the same way as internet search history is often relied upon.

Matthew’s post is here, and the original judgment he is writing about is here.

As Matthew points out, Chat GPT prompts are not quite the same as internet searches, and their meaning and what they might reveal about a person’s motivations will be very fact specific – but it seems to me that, as with internet searches, they do have potential in some cases to be really quite important evidence. The most obvious example is queries in the aftermath of an unexplained injury by a carer, which reveal their knowledge of injury or of particular mechanisms. The circumstances in this case were much more obviously susceptible to multiple different explanations, but that doesn’t mean that these searches will always be irrelevant.

Here the material was produced by (it appears) a party taking screenshots of prompt history without the user’s knowledge. I suppose we will now have to start thinking about whether our instructions to forensic experts tasked with forensic download work, will also have to include requests for retrieval of AI prompt histories, too. I have certainly seen increasing evidence that participants in family proceedings are using such products in connection with family proceedings, whether that is because their materials read like the words of a robot who has swallowed a legal dictionary, or because their phone downloads reveal screenshots of chat gpt results, so it is the logical next step.

The Judicial Press Office has just circulated this judgment of the Court of Appeal: E (A Child) [2025] EWCA Civ 1563 which, although only a permission judgment, they have specifically said is citable, in order to provide some clarification on this vexed topic. That clarification is welcome.

The headline is:

We consider it important to emphasise the exceptional nature of Re W and to underline the following. A witness of fact will generally have no legitimate ground of appeal in respect of adverse findings contained in a judgment, provided the criticisms have been fairly put to the witness in cross-examination for comment or response before the findings are made. A witness who is at risk of adverse findings does not, for that reason, have any right to intervene or to have legal representation.

Other points to note are:

• the distinction between challenge to the substantive findings and the proposed publication (a failure to be clear about this appears to have contributed heavily to the refusal to grant permission – the witness did not challenge the findings at the point they were made, instead she implicitly accepted them, before seeking later to challenge them on appeal,
• the limited relevance of article 6 in respect of a non party whose civil rights and obligations are not being determined – the key issue is that if an article 8 point is live any findings made need to have been reached by a fair process : “The cases show that the adverse portrayal of an individual’s conduct in an authoritative judicial ruling may cause serious harm to that individual’s reputation amounting to an interference with the right to respect for private life which is guaranteed by Article 8 of the Convention; and if those findings have been arrived at by an unfair process the interference may not be justified.”,
• the reiteration of the guidance in Re W that putting points to a witness in cross examination IS sufficient notice of the possibility of adverse findings (Re W was unusual in that there was no such cross examination or questions by the judge and nobody anticipated findings being made, even the parties / their legal representatives),
• the reminder of the difficulties associated with an attempt to raise new points on appeal that were not taken below,
• the reminder that the Denton relief from sanctions approach will be applied to applications for permission to appeal out of time, so good justification is required.

The judgment isn’t yet on the judiciary or National Archives site, and nor is the decision below of Henke J, but I’m told it will be up soon [update – link to permission judgment now added above – can’t see the decision below yet].

I probably could publish the judgment here, but am a bit anxious about doing that just in case there is some correction…

The professional concerned is a psychotherapist and there is reference to her ‘regulatory body’ being provided with the findings (this was not apparently disputed). I’m not aware that psychotherapists have a regulatory body, so either this is a slightly inaccurate description of a membership body for psychotherapists OR this professional is also a member of a regulated profession, for example a clinical or counselling psychologist, in which case she would be regulated by the HCPC. [update: she is not a regulated psychologist, but is a member of the BACP (British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy), who do have a complaints scheme applicable to those psychotherapists who choose to be members https://www.bacp.co.uk/about-us/protecting-the-public/].