Returning to a meaningful practice.

 By Stephen Mcphee

“Parents are not interested in justice; they're interested in peace and quiet.” – Bill Cosby

And so it ends. A year in the life of your Branch President – countless trips on the floatplane (I guess I have started to push the statistical safety envelope); a second home with the wonderful staff at the Georgian Court Hotel in Vancouver, and many interesting and productive meetings with lawyers, judges and others.

Waiting for me is a return to a more active law practice. It is appropriate that the theme of this issue of BarTalk is family law, because a large part of my practice is family law, and I am looking forward to resuming that practice with renewed energy and vigour.

I am asked with some regularity why I practise family law, or more frequently, why I continue to practise family law. It is almost as if I should have grown out of it, or moved on from it.

The answer to the first question is fairly simple – I started practising in the area because I saw it as the only real way to get litigation experience outside of a criminal law practice. And that still holds true today.

The answer to the second is even simpler – because I enjoy it. I think if one applies Bill’s quote to a family law practice it can have a transformative impact on people’s lives. While I find the law, research and precedent interesting, and am happiest in submissions – my clients just want peace. They want help – not necessarily legal help – but help extricating themselves from a relationship and help moving on.

Some of my most satisfying moments in law have been from seeing the relief wash over the face of a family law client after we have navigated through a tricky separation, or just made sure they get to see their children during the summer.
Sometimes I think family lawyers should have something akin to the Hippocratic Oath of “First, do no harm.” If we don’t keep that firmly in mind we can do significant harm at a time when clients are vulnerable.

In fact, very recently the CBABC Provincial Council passed a resolution adopting Best Practice Guidelines for Family Law that go further than “do no harm” and set very appropriate guidelines for family practice.

The CBABC Working Group – comprised of Family Section Chairs and other practitioners – spent numerous hours investing their energy and enthusiasm into this project. Our Law Society Family Law Task Force similarly collaborated on the project until a consensus was reached on the wording of the draft, and another recommendation of the BC Justice Review Task Force report “A New Justice System for Families and Children” could be checked off.

There are nine guidelines. They are simple, they make sense, and they recognize that family law is an area of law that requires us to be reminded of the very personal nature of the disputes and the influence lawyers can have in shaping the direction the disputes can take.

Not only did our Provincial Council approve the adoption of the guidelines, but they also approved the formation of a Bench/Bar Committee to continue to monitor issues that arise in family law and address them in a collaborative way.

That is another reason I enjoy practising family law – it is a community of dedicated colleagues who are unselfish with their time, and (mostly) care quite passionately about their clients and just as importantly about the system in which we all practise.

I am looking forward to re-joining that community of colleagues and putting more of my energy back into practise. Thank you all for a fantastic year.

This article was published in the August 2011 issue of BarTalk. © 2011 The Canadian Bar Association. All rights reserved.