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}}In its broadest sense, ''the legal system'' refers to how laws and policies are made, how we decide which problems are legal problems, all of the ways that legal problems are addressed, all of the people involved in resolving legal problems — including politicians, government staff, judges, prosecutors, lawyers, court administrators, mediators, arbitrators, and mental health professionals — and all of the people experiencing legal problems. This chapter takes a narrow view of the legal system, but it's the view that we see in movies and on television, where all legal problems are resolved in court by a judge after listening to lawyers arguing about the law.
The chapter begins with a <span class="noglossary">brief</span> overview of the basic elements of our legal system and how they work together. The sections that follow discuss the legal system in more detail, covering [[The Court System for Family Matters|the court system]], [[The Law for Family Matters|the law]], and [[You & Your Lawyer|the lawyer-client relationship]], in the context of family law disputes. It finishes by talking about the barriers and obstacles people often experience in resolving their legal problems, in the [[Access to Family Justice|Access to Justice]] section.
==Introduction==