Galleon’s entrance to the family law space, with their property particulars report offering, is part of a trend towards the commoditisation, or hollowing out, of services in this area generally. Why have lawyers scratching around on Rightmove, when you can have something much more carefully considered and beautifully presented, from people who actually specialise in searching for properties? 

The same point applies to evidence of mortgage capacity. When I started at the Bar, it was pretty commonplace for litigants to print off entirely self-serving calculations of their mortgage capacity from a bank’s website. Now, the expectation is at least that people will produce evidence from a broker, and there are now numerous high-end brokers who will provide really detailed assessments designed for production within litigation, such as Henry Dannell. 

Then there is budgeting. Like scratching around on Rightmove for property particulars, the production of detailed budgets for clients for the purposes of maintenance and in particular capitalisation calculations was once the preserve of the junior solicitor. But now there are companies such as Pennywise who will handle the whole process for you. They will liaise directly with the client, and produce something that is much better protected from challenge, as will anything be that is produced by someone who deals with budgeting and financial planning every day, rather than quite occasionally. Again, of course, they will not be appropriate for every case but technology will increasingly step in too.

It is also now much more commonplace for shadow experts to be engaged in the drafting of the Questionnaire, particularly where there are business assets involved. Likewise, a party’s IFA or PODE is now much more likely to be engaged in (say) drafting the Letter of Instruction to go to the actuary. In the bigger cases, we also now more frequently engage financial intelligence operatives to give us information about the scale and location of the other party’s assets (especially when they are reluctant to disclose much themselves or if the disclosure does not match the scale of the anticipated resources). And Mltpl recently launched claiming to provide data-driven business valuations in minutes, not weeks.

Not only is financial remedies practice being hollowed out (by that I mean, with less and less ‘grunt’ work being done by law firms), but there is increased internal competition. Barristers are muscling in on work that used to be the preserve of the solicitor (I say that with a degree of trepidation as a barrister who moved in-house to partnership in a firm). For example, ‘One Couple One Lawyer’ offers a barrister-led service where parties go through a disclosure process before paying for joint advice from one of a selection of counsel. Withers then launched their own service, Uncouple, which I understand also relies on barristers to deal with the conflict of interest problem in solicitors acting for both sides in the matrimonial finance context. The very fact of barristers offering their services on a direct access basis, and conducting litigation, can for some very financially savvy (and time rich) litigants, enable them effectively to run their own divorce without a solicitor. For the lower value cases, there is also now a multiplicity of ‘professional’ McKenzie Friend services. Sometimes, true, these are disgruntled ex-litigants with a cause, but some have legal knowledge and may be law students. For the clients that need hand-holding there is the divorce coach to sit alongside the therapist, both of whom will do what was previously fee earning ‘listening’ time done by solicitors. Or, more background, divorce consultants. 

With the proliferation of ADR, such as mediation, arbitration, and private FDRs, family solicitors cannot rely on the same types of work than once they did. Most clients are more discerning and aware that there are options out there for them either to reduce their fees, or to get a higher quality of overall work for the same cost. Family law is now, and will in the future increasingly be, more nimble than it once was. It is as important as ever before for solicitors and barristers who specialise in this work to be aware of the expertise that is out there and connect their clients to it. Family lawyers are increasingly an access point for other services. Those who hoard their clients to reduce flight risk are doing them a disservice. 

As marriage and divorce rates go down and the trends I have set out above reduce traditional sources of fee income, we may see, on the one hand, new types of fee earning, and on the other potentially an increased focus (happily in my view) on how we make access to ‘HNW quality’ legal advice and services accessible to those who are presently priced out. As with anything, there will be winners and losers.  

As barristers move in on some of the solicitor work – joint advice, direct access and conducting litigation – expect a fightback from solicitors.  Private FDRs will increasingly be offered and done, I suspect, by solicitors (or in-house barristers) who have access to modern office space and in-house expertise such as tax, trusts, pensions, property, etc, which can be tapped into. I expect over time that once this becomes more common, more barristers (there are a couple who have done so recently at my former chambers) will decide to fully specialise in matrimonial finance ADR and give up advocacy altogether. They may even pool together and purchase the resources they need to compete with law firm offerings.

As firms of solicitors hire more barristers, we may find that chambers hire people to do some of the more administrative aspects of solicitor work (like collating disclosure, and the production of core documentation and bundles). Many chambers already hire legal assistants. Some barristers in other fields have their own. Both sides of the profession will also increasingly turn to technology to do the work hitherto done by the other. Just as barristers will be attracted by applications that automate the collation of financial information, for example using open banking to download and exchange financial information at the click of a few buttons (rather than exhaustively collecting hardcopy statements or PDFs), solicitors may be able to turn to AI that will quite literally replace the barrister in the writing of the skeleton argument. This will come sooner than you think (it is already happening in other sectors). These forces will enable solicitors to focus on interesting advice, and barristers on superlative advocacy.

Depending on your outlook, these are exciting times to be in family law. Nimble, empathetic, tech-savvy lawyers (whether solicitors or barristers, and whether in chambers, law firms, ADR hubs, or something else) will thrive, guiding their clients like managers through a maze of related professional expertise and away from court. Our work will become more interesting and the value add will be clearer. 

There may just be fewer lawyers doing it (or, maybe, more of them doing it, for more people than before).

In the meantime, well done to Galleon for spotting a gap in a world that might benefit from their expertise. Some family lawyers will instinctively not want to contract out this work done hitherto, usually averagely, by lawyers generating fees. That reluctance is understandable, but as more new services and options, including tech, come onstream, we family lawyers will have to think hard about the way we do business. 

Author: Matthew Brunsdon-Tully
Partner and Head of Family ADR and Innovation at Wedlake Bell

mbt@wedlakebell.com