This Article provides a novel insight into how earlycareer scholars in the UK may combine different theoretical tools in their research, and the implications that this may have for the socio-legal discipline. This Article draws upon the author’s experience of combining theoretical tools from different schools of thought: Feminist legal theory, Bourdieusian theory, and Actor Network Theory, within the context of recent research into experiences of those representing themselves in family court hearings in England and Wales. Combining these theories for the first time, this Article explores the difficulties, tensions, and benefits of combining tools within socio-legal research and reflects upon the influence of the pedagogical and institutional resources that characterize the socio-legal research environment in the UK. This Article argues that the task of combining different tools provides scholars with the opportunity to work politically, because the process of reconciling tensions between different approaches requires researchers to reflect upon the worldviews that underpin their selected theories. In this sense, it argues that combining different theories within socio-legal research is a political activity, because researchers are required to reflect not only on how theoretical choices may contest, expand, or develop dominant assumptions that characterize socio-legal scholarly traditions.

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This paper explores legal need and legal advice in England and Wales during the COVID-19 pandemic. It uses the lens of vulnerability theory to examine the ways in which this crisis exposed pre-existing fragilities between the state and its relationship with the advice sector, and the individuals who experience social welfare problems. The paper commences by exploring Fineman’s vulnerability thesis and its application to those experiencing social welfare-related issues, as well as the vulnerability of the systems operating to give advice. The paper then considers the specific context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact on needs, and the ability of the sector to meet these needs. Drawing on policy documents, reports and three case studies from law centres in England and Wales, it discusses the concept of legal need and the realities being experienced. These case studies assist us in being able to critically consider the topics of vulnerability, changing needs and the role that technology is, and can play during the pandemic and beyond. Lastly, the paper points to the need for a critical consideration of the sustainability and format of legal advice in addressing legal need in the post-COVID-19 landscape.

This article contributes an insight into how the decline of legal aid in family law has transformed the role of the family court in England and Wales, and how this is, in turn, is affecting the sustainability of the family justice system as a whole. It will begin by setting out some of the pressures that have historically characterized the legal aid system in England and Wales, focusing specifically on how family law advice and representation has been uniquely and particularly targeted by a host of intersecting political efforts to minimize people’s use of family lawyers and the family court when their relationships break down. The article will then turn to consider the consequences of this for the family court. Here, the article will reflect upon how these pressures have constrained capacity and altered working practices within the family court. In sum, it will examine how the decline of legal aid has impaired the extent to which the family court can effectively operate as a safety net for families in crisis, and what the future may hold for family justice. Keywords: legal aid; access to justice; family law; litigants in person.

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