Professional courtesy crucial in family law

The way solicitors deal with each other is more than a matter of professional courtesy, the Law Society’s annual Family and Child Law Conference has heard.

Family lawyers deal with clients experiencing some of the most stressful circumstances of their lives. And when practitioners fail to treat colleagues with respect, it is “simply making a very difficult situation worse”.

Brendan Dillon, managing partner at Dillon Solicitors LLP, was speaking at the panel discussion on wellbeing led by Ruth O’Sullivan of Psychological Services at the Law Society (25 September).

“Clients can feed off bad behaviour,” Dillon said.

Licence to behave badly

“If we behave badly, then our client sees it as a licence to behave badly.”

Ultimately, Dillon said, it was the children of those relationships who could be affected.

However, he went on to say, collegiality did not mean being agreeable at all costs.

It means respect, trust, and being prepared to advocate firmly for a client, while remaining honest and respectful towards the other side.

That includes being properly prepared, returning calls, engaging with correspondence, and keeping language moderate.

Denise Kirwan, partner at Comyn Kelleher Tobin LLP, said that, while all family law was stressful, she was mindful that some colleagues were dealing with very traumatic situations.

“In child protection and child law you are altering the course of a parent's relationship with their child,” she commented.

“And more than likely your parent client is going to be coming from a place of trauma themselves,” she added.

Keep temperature down

Martina Ryan of the Legal Aid Board described her own approach as one of trying to “keep the temperature down”.

Based in Mayo, she described how, in a rural practice where the pool of family lawyers was relatively small, she was often inclined to pick up the phone early in a case, talk to the other solicitor, and try to resolve peripheral issues before they became more heated.

“If we allow ourselves to get heated, the issues become heated, the clients become heated,” she observed.

Sole practitioner Elizaveta Donnery said the same consideration applied to written communication.

The speed and volume of modern communication could make it tempting to respond immediately, particularly when solicitors may be dealing with dozens of emails and other messages every day.

Donnery recommended taking space before writing and asking what, exactly, the communication was intended to achieve.

Stress management

All agreed that collegiality and networking were an important part of stress management for practitioners, especially for sole practitioners who did not have a colleague in the office with whom to vent.

Bronagh O’Neill, head of Psychological Services at the Law Society, outlined the support available to practitioners, which includes trauma-informed counselling courses subsidised by the Law Society,, toolkits, and in-house visits where teams are looking to implement well-being policies.

Tony Watson, head of investigations, complaints, and resolutions department at the Legal Services Regulatory Authority (LSRA) and his colleague Pam Howard, explained the independent regulator’s statutory complaints framework.

Set up under The Legal Services Regulation Act 2015, the LSRA regulates the provision of legal services by all practising solicitors and barristers in the State.

Complaints deemed admissible are divided into three categories:

• Inadequate standard,
• Excessive costs, and
• Misconduct.

Where a complaint concerns inadequate legal services or excessive costs, the LSRA first invites the parties to try to resolve it informally.

However, allegations of professional misconduct are excluded from mediation and are referred directly to the Complaints Committee.

Throughout the presentation, Tony Watson acknowledged that a complaint could be distressing but advised practitioners to engage with the LSRA and never ignore its correspondence.