Family Law

Measuring Legal Service Value

~ Noel Semple

(2019) University of British Columbia Law Review, Vol. 52, No. 3.

This article proposes a theoretical foundation for measuring legal service value. It aims to support efforts to compare the value of offerings from different law firms, as well as alternative legal service providers.

The value of any legal service depends on (i) its effectiveness, (ii) its affordability, (iii) the experience it creates for its clients, and (iv) third party effects (the impact the service-provider has on people other than the client).

These four elements of value can be quantified through various metrics applied to firms or entities that provide a given service. Output metrics evaluate either the actual real-world impact of a legal service, or the written and oral work products of the firm. Internal metrics check for processes or structures within a firm that demonstrably support high value outputs. Input metrics focus on the attributes and credentials of the individuals who provide the service.

This article concludes that measuring legal service value is challenging, and may be dangerous if done poorly. Nevertheless, the rewards justify the challenge. Higher quality legal professionalism, more effective and less burdensome regulation, and consumer empowerment are among the payoffs if we can find better ways to measure legal service value.

Full text: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3144771

A Third Revolution in Family Dispute Resolution: Accessible Legal Professionalism

~ Noel Semple

(2017) Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice, Vol. 34, No. 1. (Peer-reviewed).

Innovation in family law firms can tangibly improve access to justice in Canada. This article develops that claim by drawing on empirical data and scholarship about Canadian family law. Part 1 explains how and why legal needs arising from the dissolution of intimate relationships are so difficult for the parties to meet.  This Part draws on civil legal needs surveys, surveys with lawyers, and data from interviews with litigants. The focus shifts to family law firms (including sole practitioners) in Part 2, using new empirical data about the Canadian lawyers who do this work. Three promising opportunities to innovate for accessibility in family law practice are identified: (i) innovative fee structure; (ii) innovative service variety; and (iii) innovative division of labour. A “third revolution” in Canadian family law is proposed in Part 3.  Our family law doctrine was revolutionized beginning in the 1960s, and family law alternative dispute resolution was similarly transfigured beginning in the 1980s. It is now time to foment a third revolution, in family law practice accessibility, to bring the benefits of family justice to all Canadians who need them.

Full text online: https://ojs.uwindsor.ca/index.php/WYAJ/article/view/5009

 

The Cost of Seeking Civil Justice in Canada

~ Noel Semple

(2016) Canadian Bar Review, Vol. 93.3, pp. 639-673.

How much does it cost individual Canadians to seek civil justice? This article compiles empirical data about the monetary, temporal, and psychological costs confronting individual justice-seekers in this country. The article then suggests that analysis of private costs can improve access to justice in two ways. First, it can help public sector policy-makers to reduce these costs. Second, it can help lawyers and entrepreneurs to identify new, affordable ways to reduce the costs that are most onerous to individuals with different types of civil legal need.

Online: https://cbr.cba.org/index.php/cbr/article/view/4358

This research was the subject of an article in the Canadian Bar Association National Magazine. Online: CBA National Magazine. Link here.

Personal Plight Legal Practice and Tomorrow’s Lawyers

~ Noel Semple

(2014) Journal of the Legal Profession, Vol. 39, pp. 25-47.

Commentators have predicted that computerization and off-shoring will steadily undermine demand for lawyers in North America and Europe. This essay argues that this prediction is not equally valid for all types of legal practice. Personal plight practice — in which lawyers help individuals and small businesses involved in legal disputes — is largely sheltered from both computerization and off-shoring. The article calls for the profession and legal educators to open doors between tomorrow’s lawyers and personal plight legal practice. Doing so will not only address the economic insecurity confronting tomorrow’s lawyers, but also enhance access to justice.

This article was the basis of a December 12, 2014 post at the Canadian Association of Law Teachers blog.

Full article found online here.

Reforming Ontario’s Family Justice System: An Evidence-Based Approach

~ Noel Semple

by Noel Semple and Nicholas Bala

(2013) Report commissioned by the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, Ontario Chapter. 20,000 words.

Full text: http://afccontario.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Semple-Bala-Family-Justice-Reform.pdf

Also available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2366934

 

This Report summarizes research about justice system responses to family disputes, makes recommendations for government action based on that empirical evidence, and identifies some as yet unanswered system design questions requiring further study. This document is provocative as it is premised on a realistic appreciation of the nature of family disputes and the limits of government action, especially in the present fiscal environment, and the fact that there are issues related to family justice that research has not adequately addressed and hence development of public policy must be undertaken in the face of uncertainty. Continue reading →

The Settlement Mission in Custody and Access Cases

~ Noel Semple

(2013) Working Paper.

This article reports on empirical research into family justice system workers, and their approach to child custody and access cases.  The child custody evaluators whom the author interviewed have formal roles that appear to require analytical decision-making about the best interests of children.  However, the central finding of this research is that these professionals are actually pursuing voluntary settlement between the adult parties as their primary goal.  This article then proposes an explanation for this observed phenomenon, based on the evolution of custody and access law and procedure over the past 30 years.  The rise of the “logic of durability” seems to offer a convincing explanation for the concerted pursuit of settlement among both child custody evaluators and judges.

Online: SSRN, http://ssrn.com/abstract=2101819.

The Settlement-Seeking Judge: A Mock Trial

~ Noel Semple

Fall 2013 (Published 2014), Journal of Dispute Resolution, Vol. 2013, No.2, pp. 301-329.

Judicial dispute resolution is common in family courts, where it usually consists of informal efforts to bring about settlement in pre-trial conferences. Many judges are especially eager to promote settlement in child custody and visitation (access) cases. This paper will critically evaluate informal JDR in parenting disputes, by asking whether and to what extent it is in the best interests of the children involved. It begins by identifying several features which distinguish custody and access disputes from other types of civil litigation, and which are relevant to the normative analysis of JDR in this context.

The paper then describes and evaluates three arguments which might be made against informal JDR in custody and access.  First, one might argue that there is too much settlement and not enough neutral adjudication of civil cases in general, or of parenting cases in particular. Second, one might applaud settlement in these cases but say that the efforts of the justice system to encourage it are ineffectual or inappropriate. Third, one might approve of settlement-seeking by the justice system in custody and access cases, but maintain that the system’s reliance on judges to do this work is mistaken.

The first two arguments can be rejected , but the author argues that the third has substantial merit. This paper will conclude by arguing that facilitative mediation by non-judges appears to have significant advantages over judicial settlement-seeking as a way to resolve custody and access cases without adjudication. Assigning settlement-seeking to facilitative non-judges could revitalize both settlement-seeking and adjudication in family court.

Online: Social Science Research Network, http://ssrn.com/abstract=1898629.

A version of this article also appears as a chapter in Tania Sourdin & Archie Zariski, eds., The Multi-Tasking Judge: Comparative Judicial Dispute Resolution.  Sydney: Thomson Reuters, 2013.

Mandatory Family Mediation and the Settlement Mission: A Feminist Critique

~ Noel Semple

2012, Canadian Journal of Women and the Law, Vol. 24, No. 2, pp. 207-239.

North American family law conflicts are very often brought to mediation, in which a neutral third party attempts to bring about a voluntary resolution of the spouses’ dispute.  Family mediation has many enthusiastic supporters, and has in many jurisdictions been made a mandatory precursor to traditional litigation.  However, it has also given rise to a potent feminist critique, which identifies power imbalance and domestic violence as sources of exploitation and unjust mediated outcomes. This article summarizes the feminist critique of family mediation, and assesses the efforts of contemporary mediation practice to respond to it.  Even in the absence of formal family mediation, litigating spouses are likely to be subjected to substantial informal pressure to settle from judges and other family justice system workers.  The article argues that the feminist critique might be more relevant to this “settlement mission” than it is to formal family mediation as it is practiced today.

Download from SSRN

Book Review: The Best Interests of Children – An Evidence Based Approach, by Paul Millar

~ Noel Semple

2011, Osgoode Hall Law Journal, Vol. 48, No. 3/4, p. 695-702.

If custody and access disputes are a deck of cards, the trump suit is the best interests of the child. When separating parents litigate about how and with whom their child should live, findings about what’s best for the child are meant to sweep away the parents’ interests and rights-claims. This principle is uncontroversial, but applying it is difficult. What parenting arrangements are best for children, and how successful is the legal system in putting these arrangements in place?  Sociologist Paul Millar has responded with this slim volume, the goal of which is to “explain child custody outcomes in Canada in terms of factors that predict legal behaviour and factors that are empirically associated with beneficial outcomes for children.” The empirical data in this book is a powerful and fruitful new source, but unfortunately it is not complemented by a broad or objective account of the secondary research and case law in this field.

Download from SSRN

Judicial Settlement-Seeking in Parenting Disputes: Consensus and Controversy

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(2012) Conflict Resolution Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 3, pp. 309-332

The judicial role in child custody and visitation disputes has traditionally been understood as one of authoritative decision-making. However this new empirical research suggests that many family court judges prioritize the pursuit of voluntary settlement in pre-trial conferences, using evaluative and facilitative mediation techniques. Drawing on qualitative interviews with judges and other family law professionals in Toronto and New York City, this article identifies points of consensus and controversy among settlement-seeking family judges. Despite the general support for settlement-seeking, there are substantial differences of opinion regarding coercion, due process, and the meaning of the best interests of the child standard.

Online: SSRN, http://ssrn.com/abstract=1687268

Whose Best Interests?

~ Noel Semple

(2010) Osgoode Hall Law Journal, Vol. 48, No. 2, pp. 287-336 (Peer-reviewed).

This article compares the law of custody and access disputes with the procedure used to resolve them. I argue that there is a fundamental contradiction between these two things. The former focuses on the interests of the children involved to the exclusion of all else. The latter, however, is controlled by and designed to protect the rights and interests of the adult parties to the dispute. Despite their doctrinal centrality in custody and access law, children are usually silent and invisible in custody and access procedure. To resolve this contradiction, I propose a focus on the costs and benefits of parenting litigation for the children involved. Too much parenting litigation occurs which has more costs than benefits for them. We should curtail some of these cases, and apply the proportionality principle to others. Finally, these children should have a stronger voice when decisions are being made about their future.

Download Paper from SSRN

Whose Best Interests? from Noel Semple on Vimeo.

A brief video presentation based on this paper.