Lucia Clark on Scottish Family Law: To English family lawyers - please be less polite!

This is a heartfelt plea to English matrimonial solicitors - please please be less polite. Take a hint from Scots family lawyers - be rude!

Or more accurately (but in less of a soundbite) - please carefully consider when you should apply the Pre-Application Protocol and follow the usual good practice before issuing divorce proceedings and when (for very good reason) you should proceed in a different way.

The Pre-Application Protocol has the aim of promoting negotiated and mediated settlements - which are without doubt laudable aims. To encourage this parties are directed to attend a meeting providing information about mediation before issuing an application for financial orders on divorce. Whether that is a good means of achieving those laudable aims is quite another matter but that's a discussion for another day. For now what I want to note is that there are exceptions to this rule one of which is that the application is to be made without notice to the...

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