The Family Law Language Project has a simple mission: to help make family law easier to understand, less hostile and more accessible for everyone. They intend to do this by improving the understanding and use of language.
Launched in London in November 2021 and initially aimed at the English family law profession, this campaign is just as relevant to Scotland.
Like any profession, family lawyers tend to use technical terms, and the Scottish courts have preserved much archaic terminology. Scots words such as “assoilzied” and Latin such as “avizandum” are still in common use in Scottish courts.
Our attempt in 2020 to remove the terms “Residence Orders ” and “Contact Orders” from the Children (Scotland) Act was not successful, but we continue to press for terminology which helps rather than hinders attempts to give both parents full involvement with their children after separation.
This Project states on the opening page of its web site that: “The words we use are really important. They can influence so much and make the difference between feeling safe, listened to and in control or scared, forgotten.”
They believe that: “… improving the language of family law will help to move away from an adversarial and Court based system to one which has the welfare of children and families at its heart.”
The Project web site already includes some very interesting posts on topics such as “Co-Parenting or Co-operative Parenting – what does it mean?” and “How to defuse conflict with the language you use“.
Other changes in Scottish Family Court procedure may be more urgent, but we agree with the Family Law Language Project that there is a need to consider the language that is used in court.
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