Family lawyers are under serious threat.

Parsimonious legal aid fees have made it increasingly difficult for many to persuade their legal partners that the firm can afford to offer a service in family work.

Furthermore, through the Family Law Bill the government seems bent on pressurising divorcing couples to forgo the assistance of lawyers.The Law Society's family law committee supports the proposal to give legal aid clients the chance to use mediators to resolve their problems.

The committee has long pressed the Lord Chancellor to make mediation available to legal aid clients, so that those whose cases are suitable and who wish to attempt mediation can do so.The threat arises from the barely concealed prejudice in some quarters that solicitors make things worse for divorcing couples, and that mediation will be a universal panacea.The truth is that in the overwhelming proportion of divorce cases, solicitors encourage clients to take a conciliatory approach and help them to reach agreement with their spouses.

Contested court hearings are very much the exception and almost invariably result from insuperable difficulties or intransigent clients, not from incompetent or aggressive lawyers.However, most solicitors will have come across a case where a solicitor on he other side does seem to treat discussions about the post-divorce arrangements as a piece of knock-out litigation.

Such lawyers may be a tiny minority, but they do the reputation of family lawyers no good at all.There is no easy way for the public to identify the category into which an individual solicitor falls.Legal aid franchising tells you about a firm's office systems, but not about the calibre or approach of the lawyers.

Membership of the Solicitors Family Law Association tells you that the lawyer subscribes to a code of practice, but again this neither proves competence nor guarantees that the lawyer will always adhere to the code's recommendations.The family law committee believes an accreditation scheme for individual family lawyers would provide the public with a much better guide than anything else now available.The committee believes it is essential to pitch any accreditation scheme at the right level.

Membership must not be confined to a self-selecting elite.

It must be open to all those experienced family lawyers who can show the knowledge, the commitment to continuing professional development, and the willingness to take a non-adversarial approach to these cases.The committee knows the question of developing accreditation schemes can be controversial.

Some practitioners oppose these schemes in principal.

They feel that they can at best lead to some solicitors gaining work at the expense of others, and thus that there is no net benefit to the profession.Those fears are one reason why it is so important to make sure that the criteria for any scheme is pitched at the right level.

But we must remember that, so far as family law is concerned, we are not talking simply about which solicitors do the work.

We are talking about whether the failings of a small minority of solicitors should be allowed to prejudice the position of the whole profession in its role of helping divorcing and separating couples to make the best arrangements for their future.The Society's Council is due to consider a paper next month, recommending consultation on this issue.

I hope it will attract a wide response from all those concerned with family law, so that the Council can have the fullest possible information when it comes to take final decisions about a family lawyers accreditation scheme later in the year.