DCC Family Law Essay Competition

Open to ALL students and bar candidates with an interest in pursuing a career in family law.

Prize: The winning entry in each category will be featured in the next edition of DCC’s Family and COP Team Newsletter, which is circulated widely to family law practitioners across the northern circuit, and published online. Winners will also receive one day of work experience/mini-pupillage with a family practitioner in chambers.

Remit: In no more than 500 words (excluding the title and any references), summarise a recent, interesting family law case.

You may choose to write a note in one (but only one) of the following categories:

*children – public law, for example care proceedings;

*children – private law, for example child arrangements proceedings, Wardship, surrogacy etc,

*adults – relationship breakdown, for example divorce, matrimonial finance or cohabitee cases.

Entries: Enter online here (https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=U7xv_XIpJkOQsjVVYvy6czJY6rX5u-9Bpmh3DqLrWAhUODdJV1laQVg1SDQzS1RTUFExWjE2MUY1Vy4u) by 4pm on 19 February 2021.

What are we looking for? A succinct and thoughtful case note of a recently reported family law case (after Autumn 2020) from High Court level or higher. You should identify the important principle the case establishes or develops, along with an introduction to the issue and what effect you think the case might have for practitioners. This is a difficult task because of the word limit, so only refer to the facts if they are important. The case note must be entirely your own work. Entries will be marked by family practitioners in chambers and will be marked blind, with names and any details of candidates being removed.