Created:2020-05-22
Last updated:2023-09-18
Organisations team up to provide family law guidance and advice for litigants-in-person
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Marc Bloomfield
Photos: Laura Shimili Mears
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Description: Affordable Advice launch event panel photo 25 February 2020 (photo Laura Shimili...
(L–r) Mary Marvel, Law for Life deputy CEO, who manages the Advicenow website, Colin Jones, Resolution CEO, and Melanie Bataillard-Samuel, co-chair of Resolution’s Innovation Group.
Resolution and Law for Life launched a new service on 25 February 2020 that aims to help litigants-in-person who need help with financial or children matters after a divorce. The service, called Affordable Advice, offers people a blend of guidance from Law for Life’s Advicenow website, coupled with legal advice from Resolution family lawyers when they need it most. It is aimed at those who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford legal advice, and in the current extraordinary circumstances facing the country, family lawyers may wish to signpost the service to those they are unable to help directly themselves.
Since 2012, when legal aid was withdrawn from a majority of family law cases, there has been an increase in the numbers of cases where neither side is represented by a lawyer such that, in October–December 2019, the proportion was 40 per cent, an increase of 26 percentage points since January–March 2013.1Family Court statistics quarterly, England and Wales, October to December 2019 including 2019 annual trends, Ministry of Justice, 26 March 2020, page 9. These conditions have created a situation in which thousands of families are disenfranchised from justice each year as they attempt to navigate a labyrinthine legal system designed for highly trained family law professionals. Affordable Advice is an attempt to bridge the gap.
Affordable Advice blends online step-by-step guidance that can be accessed on the Advicenow website and couples it with legal advice from a panel of Resolution family lawyers at the most crucial and complicated points in the process. Significantly, it delivers affordable fixed fees (most appointments are offered at £120), price transparency and unbundled legal advice. This encourages clients to access early legal advice, gives them confidence when choosing a solicitor, and enables them to retain full control over costs.
The Advicenow website features self-help guides covering child arrangements, finances and financial orders that are accessed over half a million times a year. The guides explain everything a litigant-in-person needs to understand and do to separate or divorce, to agree arrangements with children, and to sort out property and money. At crucial points in the process, users will be offered the opportunity to access legal advice provided by Resolution members on the panel. Appointments can be held by phone or over Skype, Facetime, or WhatsApp, making it both more affordable and more accessible to those in remote areas or with access needs due to a disability. Between the Advicenow guides and legal advice from Resolution members, users will be able to switch seamlessly between navigating their own way through separation and getting legal advice.
Both Resolution and Advicenow want to lead the way in this area and create a sustainable business model that works for clients and practitioners alike. Although the service is still in a pilot stage, it is already starting to have a positive impact and referrals to the service are operating as normal during the coronavirus pandemic. Family lawyers are encouraged to refer litigants-in-person who are unable to afford to retain the service of a practitioner themselves, to the Affordable Advice service.