ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an analysis of the evolving nature of family lawyering and family mediation in divorce matters in England and Wales, and looks at some of the professional identity implications raised by it. The study upon which this chapter is based employed a ground theory method to analyse the cues that professional bodies transmit to their members via training, accreditation, best practice and professional code requirements. The data were derived from publicly available professional body documents that set out mandatory and advisory standards and policies. The study examined the extent to which the professional bodies transmit messages of adversarialism and/or consensus-based approaches to their members, in the light of statements made by policy-makers and legislators during the passage of the Family Law Bill in the United Kingdom in the mid1990s. Further, the research addressed the nature of professional identity for each of the professional groupings, as constructed through the messages delivered by the professional bodies, employing the lens of ‘imagined masculine’ and ‘fictive feminine’ as developed by Thornton in relation to approach and identity. The labels represent a bundle of attributes and values loosely associated with adversarial and mutualist traditions, which may also be linked to dispute-resolution traditions. The research provides an analysis of some of the similarities and differences between the messages transmitted by the Law Society and the UK College of Mediators and the implications of those messages. Finally, the research examined the extent to which the higher profile of family mediation has impacted the way in which the Law Society of England and Wales interprets professional role and ethics in relation to solicitors.
