Christina Blacklaws, chair of the Law Society's family law committee, told the constitutional affairs select committee that delays in getting to court were damaging families.
"We can manage ourselves in our court process, we can have protocols but, if we cannot get before a judge for seven or eight months, that is going to do untold harm," she told the committee, which is investigating the operation of family courts.
She was backed by Liz Goldthorpe, chair of the Association of Lawyers for Children, who told Children Now that delays were common at all levels of the family court system.
Goldthorpe said much of the problem could be attributed to the "utterly stupid" system of ticketing, whereby experienced family lawyers entering the judiciary must at first serve most of their time working outside their own specialism.
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