A Family Law Residency Program?: A Modest Proposal in Response to the Burdens Created by Self-Represented Litigants in Family Court

Abstract

The explosion of self-represented litigants in family court has placed extraordinary burdens on judges, court administrators, lawyers, and the litigants themselves. Further, the legal profession has increasingly come to realize that more needs to be done to prepare lawyers for the practice of law than the traditional law school curriculum and bar admission process provide.

This article addresses each of these issues by proposing a family law residency program, modeled on medical residencies, as a means to provide both needed legal services to family law litigants of modest means and needed practice oriented training to new lawyers.

Keywords: family law, self-represented litigants, legal education, legal profession

JEL Classification: K40, K49