Family Law Conference 2024
Abimbola Badejo
20th November 2024
On 12 November, we held our 3rd Family Law Conference. This year we focussed on issues in children law, considering two important aspects of the law which pervade both private and public proceedings. We were delighted to host the event once again in the beautiful surroundings of the Inner Temple, and to welcome so many people to the event.
Lessons in Communication
We started the event discussing Lessons in Communication,: Ensuring effective participation of vulnerable people in family proceedings. We often deal with vulnerable clients and other parties in private and public proceedings, and Chris Mitropoulos and Kate Smith explained the law on mental capacity; guidance on intermediaries, advocates and interpreters; and how to engage vulnerable parties in litigation.
We were really delighted to welcome a guest speaker to this part of the Conference. Lucia Bellini is an Advocate working for Disability Rights Lambeth, and she eloquently explained her role and how she supports clients during the course of public and private proceedings.
Covert recordings
After a quick break for refreshments, we heard from Kevin Gordon about Covert Recordings in court proceedings. His talk focussed on private proceedings as there have been several cases where this has been examined by the courts, but the principles can be read across to public proceedings also. A number of the questions in the interesting discussion which followed focussed on care proceedings and how the law would apply.
Following Kevin's session, it was time for networking! It was great to catch up with lots of clients and to continue some of the discussions which had started in the lecture theatre.
We want to encourage sustainability and to lessen the impact of our events on the planet. Our conference had the following sustainability features:
- Our client giveaways were reusable water bottles (ready filled so that people did not have to bring bottled water into the conference with them);
- We did not print slides or encourage people to write a lot of notes on paper. Instead we emailed the slides to people once they returned to the office.
- Our canapes were 'Chef's Choice' which means that they were selected by the Chef at Inner Temple rather than us. This means that they are able to prioritise seasonal produce with lower food miles, and can cater for more than one event with the same menu thus reducing the potential food waste;
- We encouraged (bribed) attendees to return their name badges at the end of the event by putting all returned badges into a draw for a bottle of champagne. We believe that we had a return rate of 100% as a result!
We want to thank our speakers: Chris Mitropoulos, Kate Smith, Lucia Bellini and Kevin Gordon for their interesting the thought provoking presentations.
Thank you very much to Inner Temple for making us so welcome and for such amazing service all afternoon.
Mostly, thank you very much to all of our clients who made the effort to come. Thank you for your participation and support - and we look forward to seeing you all at the next one!