Legal Blogging Pilot Scheme to Launch in Family Courts

The Ministry of Justice has announced plans to launch a Legal Blogging Pilot Scheme on 1st October 2018, which will enable certain lawyers and charities to apply to attend private Family Court hearings and blog on the proceedings, thereby creating greater transparency regarding the Court process.

The scheme is welcomed by many who criticise the Family Justice System as being overly secretive, as well as by Family lawyers who are concerned with the legal inaccuracies that often feature in the press’ reporting of Family Law cases.

I attended a fascinating seminar last night run by The Transparency Project, who have been liaising with the Family Procedure Rules Committee for months regarding their proposals to allow legal bloggers into ordinarily private family courts, and are excited for the launch of the pilot scheme.

Sensationalised newspaper headlines, which have appeared in leading national papers, such as, “Baby forcibly removed by caesarean and taken into care”, “Nurse’s one-year-old son is taken from her care after she let him sit in a Bob The Builder toy car that was ‘inappropriate’ for his age” and “Christian child forced into Muslim foster care: Concern for girl who ‘had cross removed and was encouraged to learn Arabic’” were in fact heavily misleading, inaccurate and highly damaging to the reputation of the Family Justice System.

When these individual judgments were read in full, it was apparent that the headlines had been embellished for dramatic effect and in some cases, were plainly wrong.

Granting legal bloggers the same rights as some journalists to attend Family Court proceedings and report on the cases will hopefully ensure that there is much more transparency (and in turn, trust) in the Court process, and that sensationalised and inaccurate headlines are countered by legally-sound summaries of the Judgments made.

The pilot scheme is due to launch on 1st October 2018 for nine months.