In 40% of private family law cases, neither parent has a lawyer

The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 removed most private family law from the scope of legal aid with effect from April 2013. The stated aim was to divert families away from court and towards mediation. What it produced instead was a family court in which most people appear without a lawyer.

What the figures show

Between April and June 2024, neither party had legal representation in 40% of private family law cases. Both parties were legally represented in 19%.

The comparison that matters is with the position immediately before the cuts. In the first quarter of 2013, both parties were represented in 41% of cases. Within months of LASPO taking effect, 42% of cases were starting with neither party represented and only 4% with both. By early 2014, 80% of all family court cases involved at least one party without representation.

The National Audit Office found that the reduction in funding produced a 22% increase in cases involving children where neither party had representation, and a 30% increase across all family law cases.

Why this falls unevenly

Legal aid was not removed entirely. Evidence of domestic abuse remains a route back into scope, which means one parent in a case may be funded while the other is not. In practice that produces hearings where one side has a solicitor and counsel and the other is reading the Family Procedure Rules on a phone in the corridor.

A litigant in person is expected to draft position statements, prepare a bundle to the court’s specification, understand what a section 7 report is and what weight it carries, and cross-examine the other parent. The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 ended direct cross-examination in cases involving abuse allegations, which was a necessary reform, but it did not address the broader position of the unrepresented parent.

What it does to the outcome

Nobody publishes a figure for how often being unrepresented changes a result, and we are not going to invent one. What is documented is that unrepresented parties take longer, are less likely to settle, and are more likely to raise issues the court cannot act on while missing the ones it can.

The Justice Committee has taken extensive written evidence on this. The consistent theme from practitioners, judges and advice agencies is that the savings claimed for LASPO were substantially recovered as cost elsewhere in the system, in longer hearings and repeat applications.

If you are representing yourself

Advicenow publishes free step-by-step guides to child arrangements proceedings that are written for litigants in person and are genuinely usable. Support Through Court provides in-person help at many court centres. Your local law centre may offer a fixed-fee advice appointment even where full representation is out of reach, and a single hour spent on your position statement before a first hearing is worth considerably more than the same hour spent afterwards.