Female Lawyers & Judges

Thanks to the Law Society of Scotland's Journal for highlighting a survey which puts law at the bottom of the league table for mothers returning to work and an article about the Judicial Appointments Board for Scotland looking at why there are so few women and people from ethnic minorities applying for senior judicial roles.

According to the Training and Development Agency for Schools survey career break mums see a job in education as best suited to working mums. From the survey of 11 sectors the legal profession was seen as one of the worst jobs for mothers returning to work. Only 26% of employees in the legal profession compared to 48% of teachers will return purely for the love of the job.

This article in the Scotsman reports an inquiry into the dominance of white middle class men in the judiciary is damaging the public reputation and credibility of judges. Sir Neil McIntosh, chairman of the Judicial Appointments Board for Scotland, is quoted as saying that he believes women have as much chance as men of becoming senior judges, but not enough are putting themselves forward. The investigation will look at the factors it believes may work against women. Thankfully, in my opinion, a quota system has been ruled out.

Only four of Scotland's 35 serving senior judges are women (11%) and none are from ethnic minorities. Of the 140 full-time sheriffs, 26 are women and only one from an ethnic minority.

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Child Support & Credit Ratings

Thanks to a poster on the Ondivorce forum for providing this link to an item on the New Law Journal website regarding the report ‘Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill: Disclosure of information to credit reference agencies — exploratory analysis’

This paper examines the feasibility of sharing child maintenance payments with Credit Reference Agencies to provide additional incentives to non resident parents to meet their legal obligation. Firstly child maintenance compliance and compliance with financial products (such as bank loans or credit cards) is examined before looking in more detail at customers credit history when they have and do not have arrears registered.

It sounds a good idea but can the organisation replacing the Child Support Agency, C-MEC, be more efficient and well enough administered to target the right people?

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Will I be Barred

A new addition to my blogroll is Will I be Barred by mature student Swiss Tony who completes his Graduate Diploma in Law shortly and has been offered a place on the Bar Vocational Course. Swiss Tony became interested in law after an acrimonious divorce and acting as a McKenzie friend. Something tells me the world of blogging is never going to be the same again!

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Mole Man

Engineers hate risk. They try to eliminate it whenever they can. This is understandable, given that when an engineer makes one little mistake, the media will treat it like it's a big deal or something. For example, Hindenberg, Apollo 13, and the Tay Bridge. And now 'Mole Man's' subterranean hobby. The Telegraph reports William Lyttle, a retired engineer, who created a labyrinth of tunnels under his house over 40 years has been forced to pay £300,000 for repairs carried out by a council and has an injunction imposed against him preventing him from undoing any of the repair work. Evidently his load bearing calculations were not quite up to scratch!

Why do people not understand to the engineer, all matter in the universe can be placed into one of two categories: (1) things that need to be fixed, and (2) things that will need to be fixed after you've had a few minutes to play with them. Engineers like to solve problems. If there are no problems handily available, they will create their own problems. Normal people don't understand this concept; they believe that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet. Engineers have the ability to concentrate on one subject to the exclusion of everything else. This certainly appears the case with Mole Man's home improvements.

However, concentrating on one subject to the exclusion of everything else is a disaster in any relationship. Neglect, whether intentionally or unintentionally, causes the person whose needs aren’t being met to feel angry, offended, ashamed, demeaned, and unsafe. This is a terrible position to be in and it is the reason behind many extramarital affairs. Healthy relationships seem to rely on both parties being independent and enjoying time in each others company.

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Reforms Not Working

Following on from the announcement that an increase in dedicated domestic violence courts is planned and concerns raised by the Association of District Judges that recent reforms to curb domestic violence in England & Wales has brought about an estimated 25-30% drop in applications for non-molestation orders the Times reports a there is to be an urgent meeting between Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, and Sir Mark Potter, President of the Family Division.

The rationale offered is either offenders of domestic violence have changed their behaviour or survivors ('victim' isn't in my vocabulary!) do not want to criminalise the perpetrators. Other possible explanations I can think of might be perpetrators or/and those who make false allegations have been deterred because breaching a non-molestation order is now a criminal offence . Also mentioned was judges found perpetrator treatment programmes effective but there were severe delays. I suspect that boils down to the UK wide problem, lack of funding.

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