Book Review Of Collaborative Divorce Handbook: Helping Families Without Going To Court (9/25/09)
Nan Burnett
Forrest S. “Woody” Mosten has been a visionary trailblazer for over 30 years. The first time I heard Woody speak was in Denver in the late 1990’s. The topic was Unbundling Legal Services. I remember thinking, boy is he courageous! I contemplated the resistance he would surely face from the rest of legal community. When you get to know Woody, you quickly discover that he is a champion of the ones who have no voice, the client drowning in conflict; a change agent on a very large scale.

Confidentiality in Collaborative Cases After Thottam (6/08/09)
Elizabeth Bader
The recent case of Estate of Thottam (2008) 165 Cal.App.4th 1331, 81 Cal.Rptr. 856, has many mediators and collaborative practitioners worried about confidentiality in California. In Thottam, the Court of Appeal found that a mediator’s confidentiality agreement could reasonably be interpreted as a waiver of confidentiality and opened up a complex probate case to potentially expensive litigation.

New Article from John Lande (3/23/09)
Geoff Sharp
Just up: Lande's 50 page The Movement Toward Early Case Handling in Courts and Private Dispute Resolution.

What Collaborative Counsel Does For The Collaborative Client (3/02/09)
Laurie Israel
Collaborative law is a form of alternative dispute resolution for divorcing couples who prefer not to endure litigation, but desire vigorous legal representation. One of the first issues of concern for every potential Collaborative Law client is whether the attorney will serve as a strong advocate for that client.

They Started To Fight When The Money Got Tight (12/29/08)
Richard Sharp
This article asks must differences over scarce and limited financial resources be determined by divorce court room battles? In answer it suggests that choosing the right method in the beginning could save separating and divorcing couples, time, money and tears in the long term.

Common Misconceptions About Cooperative Legal Practice (11/10/08)
John Lande
Pauline Tesler, a prominent leader of the Collaborative Practice movement, complained about critics using a “doubting game” to unfairly criticize Collaborative Practice.

Collaborative Law and Intellectual Property Cases (11/03/08)
Victoria Pynchon
Thank you to Victoria Pynchon for allowing me to be a guest blogger. In preparing to write the post I had several topics going through my mind, but I thought it would be interesting to pitch this topic out to the fantastic readers of this blog for some feedback. This may be the first blog post that asks more questions than it answers. Is the IP arena ready for the “Collaborative Law” process?

Mediation's Kissing Cousin: Collaborative Law (10/06/08)
Geoff Sharp
In Practical Insights from an Empirical Study of Cooperative Lawyers in Wisconsin John Lande outlines the results of a 2008 survey and offers recommendations to policy leaders for improving the practice of cooperative lawyering.

Adding Cooperative Practice to the ADR Toolkit, Part Four (4/29/08)
Gini Nelson
This is one of Guest Blogger Law Professor John Lande’s posts in his series “Adding Cooperative Practice to the ADR Toolkit”. His Introduction is posted here. [Earlier Parts to the series are posted here: Part One, Part Two, Part Three] Part Four: The Divorce Cooperation Institute And How DCI Lawyers Do Cooperative Practice. The last part of this blog [Part 6] describes why the ADR field should add Cooperative Practice to the “ADR toolkit.” This part describes how lawyers can add it to ...

Report from the Wingspread Conference on Domestic Violence and Family Courts (3/31/08)
Clare Dalton, Nancy Ver Steegh
In February of 2007 the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges and the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts brought together a working group of thirty-seven experienced practitioners and researchers to identify and explore conceptual and practical tensions that have hampered effective work with families in which domestic violence has been identified or alleged. Five central sets of issues were raised at the conference and are discussed in this report. These include the following: differentiation among families experiencing domestic violence; screening and triage; participation by families in various processes and services; appropriate outcomes for children; and family court roles and resources. The report emphasizes the need for continued multidisciplinary collaboration in order to better serve families affected by domestic violence and it includes an appendix of consensus points as well as suggestions for formation of ongoing work groups.

The Client-Centered Process: Common Ground for Mediators And Collaborative Professionals (3/24/08)
Chip Rose
The Client-Centered Process: Common Ground for Mediators In his “Letters to a Young Poet,” the Czech poet, Rainer Maria Rilke counsels a young man who sent some of his work to the aging artist seeking his opinion. In one of the most memorable portions of the correspondence, Rilke encouraged his young artist friend to find comfort by “living in the question”—trusting that to do so was a far more productive endeavor than obsessing about the answers. I cannot think of a more appropriate point of professional departure for those of us who work with interpersonal, relational conflict than to practice the art of “living in the question.”

John Lande Awarded the CPR Institute's 2007 Award for Outstanding Original Professional Article (3/04/08)
Gini Nelson
Congratulations to John Lande for receiving the 2007 CPR Award for Outstanding Original Professional Article in the 24th Annual Awards for Outstanding Scholarship in ADR. I posted about John’s article, “Principles for Policymaking About Collaborative Law and Other ADR Processes” here. From the press release: New York, NM, January 18, 2008 — The International Institute for Conflict Prevention & Resolution (CPR Institute), a membership-based, nonprofit alliance of...

The Client-Centered Process: Common Ground for Mediators And Collaborative Professionals (2/25/08)
Chip Rose
In his “Letters to a Young Poet,” the Czech poet, Rainer Maria Rilke counsels a young man who sent some of his work to the aging artist seeking his opinion. In one of the most memorable portions of the correspondence, Rilke encouraged his young artist friend to find comfort by “living in the question”—trusting that to do so was a far more productive endeavor than obsessing about the answers. I cannot think of a more appropriate point of professional departure for those of us who work with interpersonal, relational conflict than to practice the art of “living in the question.”

The ABA Approves the Oxymoron of Collaborative Litigation (1/21/08)
Victoria Pynchon
The ABA Ethics Committee has given the green light to collaborative law agreements -- considered unethical in Colorado -- so long as the clients give their informed consent.  See Putting a Kinder Face on Litigation.  Excerpt below:  “When a client has given informed consent to a representation limited to col­laborative negotiation toward settlement, the lawyer’s agreement to withdraw if the collaboration fails is not an agreement that ...

Collaborative Law – The Magic of Counterpart Counsel (11/26/07)
Laurie Israel
At some point during a divorce process, everyone meets -- there is a four-way meeting of the divorcing parties and their attorneys. In a litigated case, the first in-person four-way meeting might be at a court hearing on a motion, or at the pre-trial conference with the judge. This meeting might occur after many negative experiences with the opposing side. These include depositions, discovery of documents, letters by opposing counsel (forwarded by a party’s own counsel) and reports of negotiations between counsel and/or demands and ultimatums on very painful points. There may be no history of collaborative work between the attorneys on behalf of their parties, and there is no guarantee that this first four-way meeting will be anything but unpleasant.

Collaborative Law As Limited Scope Representation (11/06/07)
Phyllis Pollack
       In one of my earlier blogs, I discussed an Ethics Opinion issued by the Ethics Committee of the Colorado State Bar determining that collaborative law is per se unethical because it creates a conflict of interest that cannot be waived.         Recently, the Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility of the American Bar Association (“ABA Committee”) issued its Formal Opinion 07-447 (August 9, 2007) determining that a lawyer may represent a client in the collaborative...

Tips For Parents Engaged In The Collaborative Family Law Process (10/29/07)
Gay Cox
You are to be commended for choosing Collaborative Practice as the means to solve any problems that you and your children’s other parent might have because you decided to separate. It is evident that you want the best possible outcome for your children and see this as a means of achieving it. Based on experience with families who select this method of problem-solving, it is apparent that they tend to have some very important common values and goals. It may be helpful to you to learn what parents who have been successful in accomplishing these goals have used as their strategies.

Collaborative law: attorneys who mediate and negotiate, not litigate (10/15/07)
Diane J. Levin
As family lawyer Diana Skaggs recently alerted readers, the nation's leading divorce lawyers are finding more cases settled before trial. This trend in favor of negotiation over litigation in divorce may in part be attributable to the growing popularity of alternatives such as mediation and collaborative law which emphasize mutual gains, joint problem solving, and better communication between disputants.In "Lawyers who mediate, not litigate: Collaborative law doesn't have to be an oxymoron", a ...

Mediators Can Enhance Collaborative Practice (9/13/07)
Beth D. Danehy
Skilled neutrals have a distinct and valuable role to play at the Collaborative table, particularly in complex or high-conflict cases. While Collaborative practitioners do at times call on neutrals to work with them on specific issues or to assist when the process has reached an impasse, integrating skilled mediators more routinely into the Collaborative process and acknowledging the distinctive benefits of working with a mediator can support the evolution of Collaborative Practice toward an increasingly effective, conscious and client-centered practice.

Principles for Policymaking About Collaborative Law and Other ADR Processes (5/14/07)
Gini Nelson
Prof. John Lande has his new article (of the above-title) in the Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution (”JDR“), the official law journal of the American Bar Association’s Section on Dispute Resolution and the most cited journal in the field of Alternative Dispute Resolution, available as a .pdf online at his website. It’s a comprehensive and detailed article (almost 90 pages including it footnotes) recommending policymaking principles;...

The Basics of Collaborative Family Law - A Divorce Paradigm Shift (5/02/07)
Sherri Goren Slovin
Collaborative Family Law (CFL) is a revolutionary approach to divorce that has quickly spread throughout the United States and Canada. Often misunderstood and occasionally maligned, it has the potential to dramatically change the field of family law.

The Spiritual Aspects Of Collaborative Law (5/01/07)
Dale L. Raugust
The good news is that within the last few years there has been an explosion of new approaches to the resolution of conflict within the family. The adversary system is now regarded by most far sighted individuals as an outdated and ineffective method for resolving conflicts within the family. Most of the time the adversary system makes the problem worse, as the members of the family are forced to talk trash about the other member to “win” their case and obtain custody of the children or a better financial settlement. One new method of dispute resolution is collaborative law.

Imagine... A Collaborative Approach To Divorce (5/01/07)
Gary Direnfeld
There is a movement in family law whereby divorcing couples can sign agreements with lawyers to not go to court. More specifically, the process is known as Collaborative Family Law (CFL) and the agreement to not go to court is binding upon the lawyers, not the couple. If one or both clients are unsatisfied, either may still march the dispute to court. They will however have to find new lawyers.

Lessons for Collaborative Lawyers and Other Dispute Resolution Professionals from Colorado Bar Association Ethics Opinion 115 (4/16/07)
John Lande
In February 2007, a Colorado Bar Association ethics opinion found that four-way Collaborative Law agreements between lawyers and clients constitute per se violations of ethical rules prohibiting conflict of interest, but that similar Cooperative Law agreements do not violate the ethical rules. Although the opinion’s reasoning and conclusion are problematic, it does highlight the importance of ethical issues in Collaborative Law. It also gives recognition to Cooperative Law, which is similar to Collaborative Law, but does not involve a disqualification agreement. (The disqualification agreement precludes the parties from retaining their Collaborative Lawyers if they decide to litigate.) Adding Cooperative Law to the roster of commonly-available ADR processes has the potential to create great benefits for parties, practitioners, the dispute resolution field, and society.

Colorado Ethics Committee Concludes Collaborative Law Per Se Unethical, Cooperative Law Not (3/12/07)
Gini Nelson
As previously posted in EngagingConflicts here, there is a significant ethical critique of Collaborative Law, and a growing movement for the practice of Cooperative Law. The main issue is Collaborative Law’s requirement of mandatory attorney disqualification if the process is unsuccessful. Cooperative Law is defined in the Colorado Ethics Committee’s Opinion as identical to Collaborative Law, but without the mandatory attorney disqualification agreement. This is the Conclusion from Ethics...