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The comment about poor service at the courts is the one which really gets to the heart of this issue. Today, in an attempt to speak to the court about a settled case over two hours were lost in phone calls where the line rang out for 20 minutes before being cut off. Emails sent to the address given in a directions order were returned undelivered.

The Civil Justice Council has expressed concern that divorce fees are not to be increased from £450 (plus the fee for the decree absolute) because this will transfer some kind of burden to the civil courts. If one considers the work which goes into the court's part of dealing with the standard divorce (which must account for well over 99% of cases) it is hard to justify the fee. Using the same method used by solicitors to measure time it looks like this:

Papers are received and read - the papers nowadays are simple and pro-forma - max 12 minutes of the time of a member of the court staff without legal qualifications.

Papers rebundled with two further documents prepared by similar court staff, max another 12 minutes.

Acknowledgement of service received and posted out to the petitioner with another pro-forma document max another 12 minutes

Application for DJ's certificate with supporting affidavit received and put with the court file for consideration by a DJ - let's be generous and say another 6 minutes.

Papers reviewed by DJ, the first person with legal qualifications to see the file - let's be generous again and allow another 12 minutes.

District Judge's certificate posted to the Petitioner - 6 minutes

Another DJ pronounces the decree alongside perhaps 20 others, total time for all 20 about three minute but again we’ll be generous and allow 6 minutes.
Decree posted to parties – 6 minutes
Application for decree absolute received – 6 minutes
Decree absolute printed and sent out – 6 minutes.
This is a total of 84 minutes. Of this time only 18 minutes have involved the time of a person with legal qualifications, a pretty junior judge who I would say can generously be equated to a very senior fee earner despite the fact that this work is very low level and routine. I don’t think I am being unkind to the staff who work in the court if I describe their skill level as the equivalent of a non-senior legal secretary. As such, in a solicitor’s office the time spent by court staff would be regarded for assessment purposes as part of the overheads of the firm, subsumed into the hourly rate.
So we have two hourly rates claimed by the court to justify the fees on presentation of a petition for divorce etc.
All the time spent - considering all the time spent, both judicial and court staff, the rate is a little over £292 per hour for what is pretty routine and unchallenging work.
Looking only at the 18 minutes of judicial time (the judges equate to fee earners) the hourly rate rises to £1,366 for this routing and unchallenging work. If the initially suggested rise in the petition fee (to £750) had been implemented that hourly rate would have been £2,500 and, the hourly rate if the time of court staff is included would be £535.

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