Class Legal have recently published a Dictionary of Private Children Law, co-authored by HHJ Edward Hess, Zoe Saunders, Piers Pressdee QC and Dr Rob George. The Dictionary is a sister to the Dictionary of Financial Remedies, also headed up by HHJ Hess.

The Dictionary comes in traditional Class Legal slimline A4 format, and the back cover tells me it is aimed at judges and practitioners,  but also that it is ‘a book sufficiently accessible for litigants acting without lawyers’.

I found it an intriguing mix of the very basic and the quite niche – some aspects will be redundant for experienced practitioners, whilst others will probably be beyond litigants in person. Writing for such a diverse audience is an almost impossible challenge. That said, there is basically something for everyone in it – it is a dictionary after all, and like any dictionary it doesn’t matter if you already know some of the terms, or if you never need to check on others – that’s the beauty of a dictionary I suppose! You go to the bit you need when the moment arises – and it’s there succinctly defined for you. Having read through it in a slightly artificial alphabetical way, its clear that some pretty tricky topics are quite neatly condensed with useful practical explanations – it looks simple when you just see the end product, but I know that this sort of writing requires both time and skill to do well – and these are done well. There are a few entries which read much more like a textbook with no more than the bare bones of the law rehearsed, without any indication of how they might be deployed in practice (largely those sections in what I think of as the ‘dead zone’ in the Children Act i.e. the alphabetised elevenses (S11A-O) and and s16, which rarely lift off the page in real life for reasons of resource and policy / politics – which is perhaps why they aren’t brought to life in this dictionary either).

I think this book is likely to be of most use for lawyers (including judges) starting out in a new and unfamiliar field – whether that is junior lawyers starting out on a career, established lawyers transferring over from crime, or newly appointed judges from a civil background having to get to grips with a whole new world of family law. But it also holds utility for the more established within the field. There are definitely one or two entries I have made a mental note to use as a panic button next time a particular issue crops up leaving me needing a quick refresher or signpost. I thought the entries on the media and publicity / privacy were examples of entries likely to be particularly useful for busy lawyers or judges who suddenly found themselves in a case where a journalist has attended, and who need a quick reminder of the rules (as someone with a particular interest in this area I thought it was a shame these entries don’t refer to all the relevant and helpful guidance, but I suspect that may be an unfair expectation for such a tightly condensed publication, where references seem predominantly to be to statute, caselaw, rules and PDs only throughout, no doubt for reasons of space).

I do wonder how accessible the language of some entries would really be to litigants in person – some assume a prior knowledge of latin (such as inter partes) or technical legal terms that a litigant in person would be unlikely to grasp, and it feels rather more as if the LiP market is more incidental – rather than this being a product designed for them. Of course, I would say that, wouldn’t I, having written a book that is designed for LiPs! In fact, I think that this book would probably be quite useful adjunct to my book The Family Court without a Lawyer – although at £65 the pricing is more in the order of practitioner pricing than LiP pricing.

My only other gripe is that as an old crone I found the font size in the print copy almost impossibly small and I really had to squint to read it, which always makes me mildly irascible. Coupled with a column layout that sometimes had me muddling as to which bit of text belonged to which entry, I think the layout of the print copy doesn’t entirely do the content justice. I haven’t seen the electronic version, but I’m confident that these minor issues will be much reduced or eradicated in that format, which these days is very much my preference over print anyway. For me, the idea of a print copy of anything that I can slip in my ‘briefcase’ (as the foreword charmingly suggests I might) is rather quaint and unreal. I’d take an e-copy any day of the week thank you very much, to save my frozen shoulder. There is quite a lot of information about the e-reader format on the Class Legal website, which looks as if it has a good range of functionality (keyword search, annotation etc), even if it does require one to run a different app / browser alongside your normal pdf reader.

You can buy this very useful book at the Class Legal website here.

UPDATE : e-book.

Class legal, having seen my review, helpfully made a copy of the e-book available to me. It can be downloaded and viewed through a proprietary app. I have downloaded and had a play around with the e-book and it definitely is an improvement on the print copy for me – much more readable and of course I can cut and paste. My personal preference would be a pdf version of the book, so that I can have it open in a tab in my pdf reader with my bundles and other case specific materials, rather than having to switch between apps – particularly when working remotely reducing the number of windows and running applications on one device is important to me – which is why, when the publishers of the Family Court Practice decided to format their e-book in some whizzy format a couple of years ago I threw my toys out of the pram! They have gone back to pdf, albeit an eye-wateringly expensive pdf.

The app itself is reasonably easy to use once you have got it downloaded (do read the instructions – I didn’t and I think that accounts for much of my initial confusion). It does lack a ‘back’ button, which is a surprising omission, but I sent some feedback to Class Legal about this and other minor glitches – and they have responded positively to that feedback, telling me that they are working on this with their developer. Given the size of the book this is not a major issue, but it is a bit irritating to have to ‘start again’ at the main menu all the time. There is the facility to make notes (electronic post its) on the book – but I have found that the note function is a bit glitchy. Again, Class are looking at this – as best I can tell it works if you open the app up from the app icon, but not if you access it via a browser. Realistically however, I doubt that for a book of this sort, the note taking function is going to be critical.

So, for me, I’d recommend the e-book in spite of the above. It’s a useful resource that I’d prefer to have on my laptop than in hard copy – and for the reasonable price of £65 (for either hard copy or digital) I can live without a back button. For a publication like the red book that is ten times more expensive and a hundred times more voluminous this sort of limitation on navigation and searchability might be a deal breaker, but here this is no more than a mild irk, and hopefully one that the nice people at Class will sort soon anyway.