2008-09-16 Unrivalled reader-friendly text

This is a must buy for any family law undergraduate.

This book was indispensable to me while I was studying during my LLB for Family law. If you are an undergraduate student, you may remember that some textbooks can be very heavy (in weight) and indecipherable in writing style - maybe because of the topic (EU law etc). Herring manages to deal with a difficult and rapidly developing topic with clarity and sensitivity. You must understand that by the time a textbook is published, often parts of it are obsolete because law moves on. Family law is no exception to this and infact probably changes more radically than other areas. Herring manages to insert a lot of rationale behind the argues surrounding a topic - say upholding marriage as an institution - where law is changing rapidly (to continue with the example, civil partnerships).

Herring text is particularly strong in:

- divorce;
- ancillary relief;
- adoption;
- marriage; and
- mediation/adr

What this book does better than most is not to over simplify but rather to consolidate the law and address the issues responsibly from a sociological perspective while, again, keeping the focus that this is a legal textbook and not a book about society and the family.

I recommend reading this book in conjunction with say the LPC Practice Guide for Family Law. I found that together I had a much clearer understanding of family law in order to get to grips with the bares bones and essentially what the law is. Often a textbook gets so wrapped up in the academic that one can easily be lead astray but that the law actually is.