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15 September 2011 / David Burrows
Issue: 7481 / Categories: Blogs
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Book review: Family Procedure Rules 2010—a guide to the new law

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For reasons which remain unclear the Ministry of Justice rushed in the Family Procedure Rules 2010 in such a way that back-up practice directions and forms were coming off the legislative press as the rules came into operation.

Family Procedure Rules 2010—a guide to the new law
Author: Stephen Parker
Publisher: Law Society Publishing, May 2011
ISBN: 9781907698149
Price: £49.95

Judges and Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) staff had minimal training; and commentators were scrambling to offer help to practitioners and lay people alike.

Stephen Parker and the Law Society are to be congratulated for producing a guide so relatively quickly. On economic and environmental grounds they can be criticised for charging for text of only 104 pages with 500 pages of source material which is readily obtainable on the internet; and the book has no tables or index.

Substantial parts of the text are little more than a summary of the rules. Commentary, which is what the reader needs, is thin; and that commentary has errors. For example, it is wrong to say forced

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