The Newsletter of California's statewide organization, "Collaborative Practice California" (Vol. 2010-2) arrived today with David Fink's summary of the recent "Celebration V," (the annual meeting held this year in San Francisco) as a featured article. The Celebration included a remarkable array of pre-conference institutes and conference plenary speakers,and David's article will give those of you who couldn't attend a vivid picture of who and what you missed.
Tom Lewis and I gave a plenary presentation of 90 minutes, focusing on a few key areas of emerging brain science with material drawn from our 18 hour course in NeuroCollaboration that we've been offering at the Straus Institute (Pepperdine Law School). Here's what David kindly had to say about our presentation:
Our focus on the brain continued Saturday morning with the opening plenary program presented by Collaborative pioneer Pauline Tesler and neuroscientist Dr. Thomas Lewis from UC San Francisco. Dr. Lewis gave a very brief overview of how our brains process information and how that impacts what we perceive through our senses. He highlighted the structure of the brain, and how different parts evolved and developed to handle different functions, and how this impacts emotional reactions and how (and when) we are able (and unable) to process information at a high intellectual level. Pauline Tesler was able to draw the connections between the science described by Dr. Lewis and the assumptions and expectations we make as we help clients through a Collaborative dispute resolution process. In particular, she noted that we often attempt to get “informed consent” to the Collaborative Process from our clients at a time when they are biologically unable to give it. In preparing for this presentation, Dr. Lewis and Ms. Tesler took a program they had previously developed and presented over 18 hours in 2 ½ days and tried to condense a portion of it into our 1 ½ hour program format. Everyone left this program wanting far more on the topic than the presenters could reasonably get through.
Re-examining through the lens of emerging understandings about the brain how we lawyers actually work with our clients (in contrast to how we like to think we are working with them) and how we can mobilize the triune brain to support rather than subvert collaborative conflict resolution is what I'm most engaged in thinking, writing, and teaching about. Co-training with a talented presenter and neuroscientist of Tom's intellectual caliber continues to be a delight and an education.
If you would like us to keep you posted about writings, trainings, and other developments in our work together on the neuroscience of conflict resolution, let me know at teslercollaboration@lawtsf.com
Starting this fall, the University of Virginia School of Law will offer a clinic designed to help low-income families resolve legal issues through mediation or other options outside of a courtroom.The yearlong Family Alternative Dispute Resolution Clinic will focus primarily on custody, divorce, visitation and support issues.
The clinic will partner with the Mediation Center of Charlottesville, which takes court-referred cases from the juvenile, domestic relations and circuit courts.Students in the clinic will co-mediate with the Mediation Center’s experienced and certified family mediators, he said.
The clinic will also work with the Central Virginia Legal Aid Society to accept referrals for collaborative law cases, in which clients retain their own lawyer, but in a less-adversarial setting than a typical family law case adjudicated in court. Clinic instructor Kimberly Emery, assistant dean for pro bono and public interest, recently designed training for local family law attorneys so they could assist in such cases free of charge.
Family Law In addition to a seminar in the fall that trains students to handle such cases, up to eight students selected for the clinic will receive 20 hours of mediation skills training through a program approved by the Supreme Court of Virginia, plus six hours of academic credit.
“All year long, students are going to be given opportunities to observe mediations and collaborative practice cases, and to actually participate in those,” Balnave said.“Even for students who are not planning to go on to family law, they’ve learned the skills,” Emery added. “They’ve also seen how one type of alternative dispute resolution may be better than another.”Balnave said by the end of the course students will be able to compare options for families in litigation, collaborative law and mediation settings.
“We’re going to have people who really want to have an amicable dissolution of the relationship and that’s going to be really satisfying for our students to work on — Family Law to help people through that difficult time,” he said.
With the new clinic, the Law School now offers 19 clinical courses. The family law clinic began last fall as a pro bono pilot project funded by a grant from the Jessie Ball duPont Fund.“The family law pro bono cases are the most difficult to place,” Emery said. “The need for family law representation is extreme.”
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