Family Law Blog: Time for solicitors to be banned from dealing with divorce

Any solicitor is allowed to advise on and deal with a divorce! It does not matter that they may never have done so before and have no good knowledge of the subject, except passing the relevant paper when they were at College of Law!

It is time to ban solicitors, indeed all lawyers and that includes Judges,  from dealing with divorce unless they have special training.

I think the needs are:

• specialist work in the field of family law
• special training in mediation
• training in client's emotional needs
• training to be a collaborative family lawyer
• peer supervision by a specialist family lawyer
• a requirement to offer clients fixed fees for work to be done in every case
• work on communication skills 

What are your views?

Andrew Woolley
Divorce Solicitor