These days, it's hard to open a newspaper or turn on the TV without hearing about the outcome of a criminal court case.

In the USA, things are even more intense, with some courts allowing TV cameras into the courtroom,

giving the world a blow-by-blow account of proceedings.

On our oaths, do find the defendant asks to count one, first-degree murder, guilty.

So we think we know how the justice system works, how it grapples with issues and applies the law.

But there's a huge area of the law that most of the UK knows nothing about.

Courts that decide on massive decisions that have really big ramifications on people's lives.

And yet, we hear nothing. Why? Because journalists, more often than not,

are not allowed to report. I'm Maeve McClenigan. This is the tip-off.

I am Louise Tickle and I'm a freelance journalist writing on education and social affairs.

Louise Tickle is a journalist with a beat. Ask anyone in the sector and they'll know who she is because Louise is one of a handful of tenacious reporters, trying and sometimes failing,

to report from the family courts. I've done loads of nice simple feature stories. You know,

I've been doing this for 17 years and when I came back to work after having my second child,

I was so knackered and so exhausted and run down. And it kind of felt like what was the point of just doing the same old stuff that I'd been doing before? I kind of felt like I had to make step change to make it worth. You know, the time, the tiredness and all of that. And Louise was working as a freelancer. And that comes with its own challenges. As a freelancer, it is hard.

I have got a lot of support, partly through being a freelancer, because people know that you

don't have that institutional wraparound support helping you. So in one sense, I perhaps get more

than I might otherwise. Also, I can make my own decisions about what I do. Yes, often those decisions

might not end up with me being paid very well for them, but it keeps me really interested.

And I am kind of compelled to do this family law work. You know, I've done a lot of work on

domestic abuse and that has a good crossover. I did quite a bit of work on child sexual exploitation

and that has some crossover,

but it kind of brings the whole state power thing in.

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