‘It’s difficult to imagine the pain’: the tragic consequences of Australia’s broken family law system | Law (Australia)

When the ICL in the article says that people who apply to do ICL work are not doing it for the money, I think that comment should be qualified to say that people who apply to ICL work well are not doing it for the money.

I dont know about other states but in Qld I see a lot of practitioners who are frankly lazy and incompetent apply to do ICL work because frankly they would probably struggle to generate an income for themselves otherwise. That sort are typically the ones who fail to organise reports, fail to cause subpoena to issue, fail to properly identify the actual issues and get the evidence together in relation to it.

They are also the sort who typically "wing it" by making submissions based upon their own gut instincts rather than evidence.

The problem is complex. Given the paltry rates that are on offer, the lazy types seem to feel that they need to take on a large volume of ICL files to generate income for themselves. That just exacerbates the consequences of their laziness and ineptitude. Offering more money might attract better quality practitioners. It might just also change nothing.

If they started imposing personal sanctions on legal practitioners in the Family law jurisdiction for failure to comply with orders, failure to follow the Rules or just plain incompetent performance, that might change something.

If the Government started appointing Judges who actually had decent family law experience that might help too.

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