Trying to Change Family Law From the Outside: A Personal Reflection on Access to Justice

I saw an interview with Kate Daly today and it stopped me.

Not because our businesses are the same.

They are not.

Not because our work is identical.

It isn’t.

But because I recognised something in the reason she started.

Kate Daly co-founded amicable after experiencing an expensive and acrimonious divorce herself.

She wanted to create a different way for separating people to navigate the legal and emotional consequences of divorce — less adversarial, less expensive and more accessible.

Four years later, that business model was being examined in the High Court.

The questions were serious.

Was amicable improperly acting for both parties?

Was it undertaking legal activity which only an authorised person could lawfully perform?

Was a business created to make divorce easier crossing the line into the reserved legal activities protected by the Legal Services Act 2007?

Ultimately, the answer in JK v MK & Anor [2020] EWFC 2 was no.

Mr Justice Mostyn found that amicable’s particular model did not create the conflict alleged and did not transgress the relevant reserved legal activities considered by the court.

He also said something which has stayed with me:

There was clear social benefit in what amicable was doing — but social benefit still had to remain subordinate to the law.

I think anyone trying to change the way people access family justice should sit with that sentence.

I certainly do.

There is a huge space between “solicitor” and “completely alone”

I think we still talk about access to legal help too often as though there are only two possibilities.

You instruct a regulated law firm to manage the case.

Or you represent yourself.

But real life is much messier.

A litigant in person may need help understanding an order.

They may need somebody to organise three years of messages into a chronology.

They may need help distinguishing:

• allegation from evidence;
• evidence from opinion;
• professional opinion from judicial finding;
• and background history from something the judge actually needs to decide.

They may need help structuring their own witness statement.

They may need somebody to analyse a Cafcass report and identify where a conclusion can — or cannot — be traced back to the evidence.

They may need help preparing a bundle.

They may need somebody sitting beside them at court as a McKenzie Friend.

They may need three hours of focused assistance rather than three months of full representation.

Those needs are real even when the person cannot afford the traditional delivery model.

That is the space JSH Law is trying to work in

JSH Law Ltd is deliberately transparent about what it is and what it is not.

It is not an SRA-authorised solicitors’ firm.

It provides non-reserved legal support and practical litigation support for people representing themselves.

It does not go on the court record as the client’s solicitor.

It does not conduct litigation on the client’s behalf.

Where McKenzie Friend support is provided, the litigant remains responsible for their own proceedings; any ability for a non-lawyer to address the court is a matter for the court and should never be assumed.

Those boundaries are not small print to me.

They are part of the model.

And that is perhaps the part of Kate Daly’s story I recognised most strongly.

When you try to build legal support differently, you cannot afford to be casual about the boundary.

You have to understand it better.

Innovation does not give anyone permission to ignore regulation

The Legal Services Act 2007 draws an important distinction between legal activity generally and reserved legal activities.

Reserved activities include, among other things:

• the exercise of a right of audience;
• the conduct of litigation;
• reserved instrument activities;
• probate activities;
• notarial activities;
• and the administration of oaths.

Many forms of legal advice and assistance are not themselves reserved.

That is one reason a substantial unregulated legal-services sector exists in England and Wales.

The Legal Services Board’s own research describes that sector as large, complex and diverse, with possible benefits including more transparent and potentially more affordable pricing.

But “unreserved” does not mean “unimportant”.

And “unregulated by the SRA” does not mean “anything goes”.

Consumer law matters.

Data protection matters.

Confidentiality matters.

Advertising accurately matters.

Professional boundaries matter.

Safeguarding matters.

Insurance matters.

And most importantly, the person seeking help needs to understand exactly what service they are buying.

The consequences are real even when you stay inside the line

This is the part I think is rarely discussed openly.

Trying to build something different in legal services is not consequence-free.

You become acutely conscious of language.

Every service description matters.

Every page of the website matters.

The distinction between:

“helping somebody prepare a document”

and:

“conducting their case for them”

matters.

The distinction between:

supporting somebody at court

and:

assuming a right of audience you do not have

matters.

The difference between describing legal information accurately and creating an impression of regulatory status you do not hold matters.

You have to be prepared to explain the model.

Again.

And again.

And sometimes to people who may instinctively believe that if legal help is not being delivered through the traditional structure, something must be wrong with it.

I understand why scrutiny exists.

People seeking legal help are vulnerable to bad advice.

Family cases can involve children, homes, money, safety and life-changing orders.

Regulation exists for reasons which matter.

But scrutiny and innovation do not have to be enemies.

Mostyn J’s judgment captures that tension remarkably well

In JK v MK, the judge did not simply wave away the regulatory concerns because amicable had a socially valuable purpose.

Quite the opposite.

He said, in substance:

if what amicable was doing was unlawful, the business model would have to change.

That is important.

Social purpose does not place a business above the law.

But once the legal questions had been examined, the court also recognised what the service was achieving.

Mostyn J said there could be no doubt that amicable had greatly improved access to justice for people effectively disenfranchised from the legal process following the near-total withdrawal of legal aid from private family law proceedings.

That is a striking judicial acknowledgement.

Because it names the uncomfortable context.

Alternative legal services do not arise in a vacuum.

They arise because the traditional system leaves needs unmet.

The access-to-justice gap has consequences too

There is rightly a lot of discussion about the risks of unregulated legal assistance.

There should be.

But there are also risks in leaving people completely unsupported.

A parent who does not understand the order may breach it unintentionally.

A domestic-abuse survivor may have years of evidence but no idea how to present a pattern coherently.

A litigant may file 80 pages because nobody has helped them identify the five pages the judge actually needs.

A person may focus on proving that their former partner is a terrible human being when the court needs evidence about a particular welfare issue.

Somebody may miss an appeal deadline because they do not understand what happened at the hearing.

A good case can be badly presented.

A serious safeguarding issue can disappear inside disorganised paperwork.

A person can be legally entitled to participate and practically unable to do so effectively.

Those are access-to-justice risks too.

And some cases need a solicitor or barrister

This matters just as much.

An access-to-justice model only works if it knows when it is the wrong model.

There will be cases where somebody needs regulated representation.

There will be reserved work JSH Law cannot undertake.

There will be hearings where specialist advocacy is required.

There will be legal issues where formal advice from an authorised practitioner is necessary.

There will be cases so factually or procedurally complex that limited-scope assistance is not enough.

A responsible service has to be willing to say that.

One of the things that interested me in JK v MK was amicable’s use of what the judgment described as “red flags”.

Where the case fell outside the suitability of its model — including matters involving domestic violence, psychological abuse or unwillingness to negotiate — the parties would be directed elsewhere.

That makes sense.

Innovation works best when it has boundaries.

My own route into this work matters too

I did not become interested in family justice because I found legal procedure intellectually interesting from a distance.

I became interested in it because I saw what happens when real people have to navigate a system they do not understand while dealing with some of the most difficult experiences of their lives.

That is why JSH Law has become so focused on:

• evidence;
• coercive control;
• safeguarding;
• children’s welfare;
• procedural fairness;
• litigants in person;
• and legal technology.

I am also continuing my own legal training through the SQE route.

That matters to me.

I want the knowledge.

I want the professional discipline.

I want to understand the system from inside it as well as from the experience of people trying to navigate it.

But I do not think we should have to wait for every access-to-justice problem to be solved by somebody eventually being able to afford traditional representation.

Legal technology makes this debate even more urgent

The landscape Kate Daly entered in 2015 already looks different.

AI now gives ordinary people access to tools capable of:

• drafting legal-looking documents;
• explaining procedure;
• analysing large quantities of material;
• finding patterns;
• summarising judgments;
• and helping organise evidence.

People are going to use those tools.

They already are.

The sensible question is not whether we can put the technology back in the box.

It is how we create safe structures around its use.

That is increasingly part of what I think services like JSH Law can contribute.

Not pretending AI is a lawyer.

Not pretending an unregulated provider is a solicitor.

Not pretending the Family Court is simple.

But helping people use available tools more safely, organise their evidence more effectively and understand when professional regulated advice is actually required.

The traditional profession and alternative support should not have to be enemies

I do not think the future of legal services has to be a battle between solicitors and everyone else.

That framing is too crude.

There are things authorised solicitors and barristers can do which non-authorised providers cannot.

There are protections associated with regulated practice which matter.

There are also tasks for which full representation may be disproportionate or financially impossible.

A mature legal ecosystem should be able to accommodate:

• traditional full representation;
• unbundled regulated services;
• direct access barristers;
• mediation;
• McKenzie Friend support;
• non-reserved legal assistance;
• legal information;
• technology-assisted self-help;
• and referral between them.

The question should be:

what does this particular person actually need, and who is legally and competently able to provide it?

Not:

how do we make every problem fit the same delivery model?

There is risk in trying to change things

I think that is what Kate Daly’s interview brought home to me.

It is easy, after somebody succeeds, to tell the story backwards.

Successful founder.

Landmark judgment.

Thousands of clients helped.

A business model which now looks established.

But that is not how it feels while you are building it.

While you are inside the story, you do not know how it ends.

You only know why you started.

You know the problem you can see.

You know the people the existing system is not reaching.

And you have to decide whether you are prepared to keep building something different while being exceptionally careful about how you do it.

I am.

Not regardless of the consequences.

Precisely because I understand that there are consequences.

For getting the legal boundaries wrong.

For getting safeguarding wrong.

For overstating what a service can provide.

For giving somebody false confidence.

But there are consequences to doing nothing as well.

There are consequences when people cannot afford help.

When serious evidence is badly presented.

When somebody gives up because procedure becomes impossible to navigate.

When access to justice technically exists, but only for people who understand the system or can afford somebody who does.

I am not trying to replace family lawyers. I am trying to reduce the number of people who have to face the Family Court with no meaningful support at all.

That is the work

Kate Daly set out to make divorce less painful.

Her particular solution was tested in court and survived that scrutiny.

Mine is a different project.

I am interested in the people for whom family justice has become overwhelming: people representing themselves, people dealing with safeguarding concerns, people trying to turn years of events into evidence a judge can actually use.

I want to make that process more navigable.

More evidence-led.

More trauma-informed.

More technologically capable.

And, where possible, more accessible.

I know that work has boundaries.

I know it attracts scrutiny.

I know there will be difficult questions.

There should be.

But I also know why I am doing it.

The answer to an inaccessible justice system cannot simply be to tell people who cannot afford traditional legal services to navigate it alone.

There has to be something in between.

JSH Law is my attempt to help build part of that space.