A judicial climbdown on McKenzie friending in Scotland – almost, but not quite… YET

Who needs the final series of Lost when we have Lord Hamilton to keep us on the edge of our seats, not knowing what’s coming next?

First it was that McKenzie friends should sit behind and not beside the litigant in person…

In preparation for taking the short journey by ferry from Belfast to Stranraer to McKenzie friend, everyone in our office practised being ‘back seat drivers’ . If we had’ve continued with such legal athletics we would likely have ended up with neck strains, arms like Tyson and calf muscles like bison. Have you ever tried to lean forward holding 500 pages in a lever arch file? One of our guys suggested a fitness test should be compulsory if planning to work in Scotland. How we laughed!

Not content with the Herod-esque attempt to kill McKenzie friending in Scotland in its infancy, the legal elite in the person of Lord Hamilton decided that if they couldn’t stop McKenzie friending totally, they would discourage people from assisting personal litigants by making it law that McKenzie friends can’t receive payment for their services in Scotland.

Worryingly for those interested in true access to justice the restriction at 5 (iii) should mean that no-one can receive payment for McKenzie friending in Scotland…and I mean no-one. That would include employees of any of the many excellent Scottish groups that potentially provide services to litigants in person such as the CAB, as I fail to see how an employee of one of these organisations is exempt from 5 (iii)?

The no payment angle was part of Ian Hanger QC’s submission to the Committee, and I am sure the committee were delighted to see such a notable as the original McKenzie friend say ‘HE’S LAY – SO YOU CAN’T PAY!….

‘HURRAH!!’ must have come the paternal and protectionist noises from the massed ranks of the legal profession and their brother and sister judges. The beginning of the end for some of them had been postponed, and they had just been handed what they thought was the stake that would spear the evolutionary product of McKenzie friends –  the big bad LAY ADVOCATE – the previously unstoppable walking talking action man and woman with moving eyes and mouth.

If this ridiculous restriction on access to justice is allowed to stand in Scotland it will leave only the independently wealthy, retirees, dole-ites and students skiving off uni as potential McKenzie friends. Just as the establishment wants it – an uneducated or transient opposition, unlikely to ever get enough experience to have a strategic influence on the law. It will also mean that our trips to Stranraer will be for pleasure only.

A begrudging, bedraggled vested interest attempt at legal drafting? Prospect of being passed into law with 5 (iii) in its current form? In the negative integers I would say.

Perhaps Lord Hamilton might be assisted by what another extremely highly respected family judge (Mr Justice Munby) said at para. 54 of In the Matter of N (A Child) [2009] EWHC 2096 (Fam)

‘Dr Pelling may be unqualified but he is plainly highly knowledgeable and experienced in such matters and he is entitled to charge, if he can find clients willing to pay his fees, at an hourly rate which can hardly be said to be extravagant when contrasted with the fees one frequently finds being charged to privately paying clients in family cases.’