Collaborative Divorce Newsblog

Getting to the Right Section of the Straus Institute website to Register for the Advanced Collaborative Family Law course in June

2008-04-07T11:06:00.000-07:00

There seems to be some confusion about how to access website information about this course.

Here is how to do it, step by step.

First, go to the section of the Pepperdine website that belongs to the Straus Institute, and navigate to the pages about courses and conferences. This is the destination URL:

http://law.pepperdine.edu/straus/training_and_conferences/

On this page, on the left, you will find a column listing programs. Select "21st Annual Summer Professional Skills Program in Dispute Resolution", which will take you to this URL:

http://law.pepperdine.edu/straus/training_and_conferences/summer/

There, you will see a list of the course offerings in this summer Professional Skills Program. Click on "Advanced Collaborative Family Law," which will take you to this URL:

http://law.pepperdine.edu/straus/training_and_conferences/summer2008/advanced_collaborative_family_law.html

And there, you should be able to find much of what you need to know. If you have any questions about registration, accommodations, etc., contact the program administrator, Lori Rushford, at at (310) 506-6342 or e-mail Lori.Rushford@pepperdine.edu to enroll or to request a brochure.

The program fee includes both lunches and receptions attended by participants and trainers from all the listed course offerings.

Many people have inquired about registration. I'm delighted about what promises to be a great group of participants.

Finally, I hope, workable information and registration link for Advanced Collaborative Family Law Training

2008-04-04T10:46:00.001-07:00

Many of you have let me know that the links in my earlier posting do not work as they should. I'm delighted at the degree of interest that I'm hearing about this advanced training. For those of you who want to contact the Straus Institute for more information or to register, here is how to do it:

For registration fees, course descriptions, and faculty bios
contact Lori Rushford at 310.506.6342 or lori.rushford@pepperdine.edu or go to http://straus.pepperdine.edu
and click on Training and Conferences.

Apologies to those of you who found the earlier links I provided unworkable.

Certified Family Law Specialists: 18 Hours of CFLS Credit for Advanced Collaborative Family Law Course

2008-04-03T10:57:00.000-07:00

The Advanced Collaborative Family Law Course to be held at the Straus Dispute Resolution Institute (Pepperdine Law School, Malibu, CA) on June 19-21 has just been approved by the State Bar of California Board of Legal Specialization for 18 hours of certified family law specialist education credits, including one hour in family law legal ethics, and two hours of credit in psychological and counseling aspects of family law.

The course also carries eighteen hours of California MCLE credit, including an hour of legal ethics credit.

The Straus Institute programs are recognized by many or most states for mandatory continuing legal education credit. If you are certified as a family law specialist in a state other than California, check with your own certifying authority regarding whether it will recognize this course for certified specialist purposes.

Advanced Collaborative Family Law course in gorgeous Malibu, California

2008-04-03T10:31:00.000-07:00

Here is the link that will take you to detailed information about how to enroll in the two and one half day Advanced Family Law course at the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution, Pepperdine Law School, Malibu, California:

http://law.pepperdine.edu/straus/news_events/events/psp_malibu.html

If you are tired of talking heads discussing the latest appellate decisions as your way of satisfying your continuing legal education requirements, consider joining me and David Fink in Malibu, where you will work intensively in a small group with experienced collaborative lawyers from across North America and elsewhere, in a seminar format that includes roleplay, demonstrations, and case conferencing.

In the evening, the course includes meals and socializing with trainers and practitioners from around the world who are participating in this and the many other courses being offered as part of this June Professional Skills Program.

The location can't be beat: a gorgeous modern campus overlooking the Pacific Coast Highway and the beaches of Malibu, about a twenty minute drive north of Santa Monica/Los Angeles.

The course is approved for eighteen hours of MCLE credit and approval is pending for California certified family law specialist credit, including credits for legal ethics and psychological and counseling aspects of family law.

Come to the ABA Professional Responsibility meeting in Boston

2008-03-31T16:57:00.000-07:00

On Saturday morning, May 31, 2008, in Boston, Massachusetts, I'll be participating in a panel discussion about the ethics of collaborative legal practice, at the American Bar Association 2008 National Conference on Professional Responsibility, which is being held at The Seaport Hotel in Boston. Other panelists include Paula Noe, a collaborative lawyer from Massachusetts, Scott Peppet, a Colorado law professor with a special interest in the ethics of collaborative practice, and moderator Jim McCauley, of the Virginia State Bar.

The panel is going to take a constructive and practical approach, beginning with how to do it right (i.e., how to practice in a way that accords with professional legal ethical mandates) before discussing how practitioners might go astray and how to avoid that.

Anyone who is interested in attending can find conference registration and program information by clicking on the title of this post. I'd love to see lots of collaborative practitioners in attendance who can help the conversation stay focused on the degree to which we do it well, more than on the horrible things that could happen if someone made lots of errors.

Landmark Collaborative Divorce Team Training in New York

2008-03-21T10:27:00.000-07:00

Last week, more than a hundred lawyers, mental health and financial professionals gathered in Westchester County, New York, for the second in a series of free, state-court sponsored trainings of collaborative divorce professionals. The trainings are sponsored by the New York state court system, as part of building the first publicly-funded Collaborative Law centers in the United States. Participants committed to provide several hours of volunteer professional services in the centers in return for free training in Collaborative Law, interdisciplinary Collaborative Divorce, and interest-based client-centered negotiations (aka mediation training).

The trainers--myself, Maria Alba-Fisch, Ph.d., and Diane Drake, CFP--worked with a group of volunteers including Kathryn Lazar (collaborative lawyer) and Jonah Schrag and Alison Bell (collaborative divorce coaches) to teach participants all aspects of interdisciplinary team collaborative practice. The two-day event began with an overview of collaborative practice, followed by a full day of skills training in separate-discipline breakout groups. "Cross training" (each trainer working for a while with breakout groups from the other two disciplines) ended the day. On the second day, trainers focused on building the skills required for effective collaborative teamwork--becoming a functional system that can help our clients' dysfunctional systems. The volunteers worked with us to present a spectacularly effective demonstration of an interdisciplinary team in action with a couple moving through a divorce.

I was struck with how easily all of us presented the demonstration, working collegially as a well-oiled collaborative team--even though several of us had never even met until the hour preceding the demonstration! There is no doubt in my mind that this reflects the inherent power of collaborative team experience to change how we all understand and peform our work: there is a way to do this that works, a way that we all learn gradually by interacting in professional teams, struggling together with challenges, sharing ideas, and engaging in constructive team problem-solving with colleagues who bring other skills and perspectives than our own.

One person attending the event was so impressed with the smoothness of our work together that she wondered how on earth we'd managed to get so much case experience together, living as we do on opposite coasts. Of course, I'd never worked with these professionals ever on an actual case. But working in our own practices and practice groups over time, we all learned the same lessons about how to facilitate effective deep conflict resolution in team practice. To me, this confirms what we all learn over time: that the universality of conflict and conflict resolution principles transcends the specifics of geography and national and legal culture.

The training series reflected my strong belief --derived from experience--that lawyers need quite a bit more than can be offered in a two or three day introductory interdisciplinary training in order to make the substantial shift from conventional legal advocate to collaborative lawyer. The design for this series was for the lawyers to begin with an intensive two-day introductory training in collaborative law, as a prerequisite for enrolling (at intermediate level) in this two-day team training. In other words, the lawyers spent the first day of our team training honing their collaborative lawyering skills at intermediate level while the other professions had their introductory collaborative skill-building day. Then, on day two, all professions gathered together for their training in how to work as a team. This is the model that I have been recommending as a preferred training sequence.

When lawyers have a team training as their introduction to collaborative practice, they have met the IACP minimum aspirational standard for a collaborative training experience. But they probably won't have had more than a few hours of focused training in the skills and understandings specific to the legal role in collaborative practice. We all know that of the three professions, the learning curve is greatest for the lawyers. Many of us are also recognizing that lawyers who come to this work from experience as mediators bring considerable skill in their work with clients, and therefore may often think that an introductory collaborative law training would be redundant for them.

Au contraire. A good introductory collaborative law training spends little time on client centered interest based negotiations, because there are great mediation trainings available that provide those skills in much greater depth, and the IACP standards call for practitioners to take such trainings. A good collaborative law training focuses on transforming how the lawyers understand the difference between traditional and collaborative legal advocacy, and on the resulting transformation in how we work with our clients and our collaborative legal colleagues on a case.

That is not taught in mediation training, is not learned in mediation work with clients, and cannot be taught to lawyers in the time available for breakout work in an introductory interdisciplinary collaborative team training. Lawyers who never attend a full-bore collaborative law training may tend to bring into their collaborative work their habitual negotiating attitudes and techniques without recognizing that there is a profoundly different way of working as a collaborative lawyer.

Many of my intermediate and advanced trainings these days are with practice groups struggling to break through the low ceiling that conventional advocacy approaches will impose on the conflict resolution work of an interdisciplinary team, in communities where the lawyers may have handled a lot of collaborative cases but may not have transformed how they work with the law, how they counsel clients, how they identify and support clients in advocating interests, how they handle impasse, and how they work collegially with lawyers and other members of the team.

Interdisciplinary teams are limited in their potential by the conflict resolution understandings and skills of the least effective member of the team, and often, that least effective member will be a collaborative lawyer who is entirely unconscious of the reality that he or she is bringing fairly conventional advocacy and negotiating approaches to the process.

An incomplete paradigm shift affects the larger collaborative community as well as individual clients and families. Lawyers are still the most frequent gateway into the collaborative process, and lawyers who aren't aware of the persistence of conventional approaches to divorce legal advocacy in their own work may put out inaccurate "core messages" about how collaborative practice differs from other dispute and conflict resolution modalities---or even worse, may talk the talk without being able to walk the walk.

I don't think the lawyers who attended this recent sequence of trainings in New York will have these problems. It was great fun, and a privilege, to work with all of them and their new colleages.

A web resource for divorcing clients

2008-02-16T16:25:00.000-08:00

www.thesmartdivorce.com
is a site that provides information and cross-links offering a wealth of useful information for people contemplating or going through divorce. The emphasis is on approaches that encourage civility and keep conflict contained.

Really effective use of video for publicizing Collaborative Practice

2008-02-15T09:58:00.000-08:00

Collaborative Practice California [also known as "CP-Cal"], our statewide association of practice groups, has put together a powerful short video clip meant to be used as a public service announcement and for other public education purposes. It is really well-done. Notice the use, at the end, of the really wonderful billboard image designed jointly by IACP and the collaborative lawyers' organization in Cincinnatti, Ohio.

CP-Cal has been asked about the possibility of licensing use of the video to other groups. No answer yet, but stay posted, and meanwhile, look at the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok301ML-4ww

Final Training Schedule in Northern Ireland and Irish Republic

2008-02-08T14:39:00.000-08:00

It's now been confirmed that in addition to introductory two-day collaborative law trainings in Belfast and in Dublin, there will be a third introductory training, to be held in Galway, Ireland.

These trainings have been scheduled around the time of the Second European Collaborative Conference, which is taking place on Fota Island, Cork, Ireland. The conference is co-sponsored by the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals and the (Irish) Association of Collaborative Professionals, and it promises to be both rich in content and great fun. Full details can be found at http://acp.ie

My training dates:

Belfast, Northern Ireland, April 24 and 25--Level One Lawyer Training. Contact John Reavey for details: j.reavey@reavey-ni.com

Dublin, Ireland, April 28 and 29--Level One Lawyer Training. Contact John MacDaid, Legal Aid Board of Ireland, for details: JAMcDaid@legalaidboard.ie

Three hour intermediate/advanced training workshop at the Cork Conference, Saturday afternoon, May 3. See link above for conference registration information.

Galway, Ireland, May 12 and 13--Level One Lawyer Training. Contact Brid Manifold for details: BMManifold@legalaidboard.ie

Update on Pepperdine Strauss Institute Professional Skills Program

2008-02-07T16:47:00.001-08:00

In addition to presenting a 2 1/2 day Intermediate/Advanced collaborative law workshop in June at the Malibu campus of Pepperdine Law School, it seems likely that David Fink and I will present the same training event a second time October 23/24/25, in Woodstock, Vermont, during the Fall session of the Straus Professional Skills Program. This is the week after the IACP Forum in New Orleans. For those of you on the East Coast who might be interested, mark your calendars.

Attendance at these workshops and trainings is strictly limited.

You can register for the June program by going to
http://law.pepperdine.edu/straus/training_and_conferences/ --click on "21st Annual Professional Skills Program. "

For further information about the October event, contact the coordinator,

Lori Rushford

Professional Education Program Administrator

Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution

Pepperdine School of Law

24255 Pacific Coast Highway

Malibu, CA 90263

(310) 506-6342

Fax: (310) 506-4437

An in-depth BBC Interview about Collaborative Law/Collaborative Divorce

2008-02-04T14:13:00.000-08:00

You can listen here to an intelligent conversation about collaborative law which includes an in depth response to a therapist who argues that they need to be included in the process--that lawyers alone are not sufficient.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/2005_17_tue_01.shtml

This interview was done in 2005. By now, the skeptical therapist would surely be aware of interdisciplinary team collaborative divorce, which addresses each of the concerns about which she contends lawyers alone will not suffice.

More Information about Trainings in Ireland

2008-02-04T10:51:00.000-08:00

In Belfast, Northern Ireland, I'll be presenting an two-day basic training in Collaborative Law on April 24 and 25. Next, in Dublin, Ireland, there will be another two-day basic Collaborative Law training on April 28 and 29.

I'm delighted to be participating in the Second European Collaborative Law conference , which takes place in Cork, Ireland beginning May 1. In addition to sharing the keynote address with Stu Webb, I'll present a three-hour extended workshop for lawyers focusing on the "buy-in" phase of a collaborative case, addressing how to communicate passionate enthusiasm for collaborative practice while facilitating fully informed client process choices. This workshop is intended for lawyers who have had a basic collaborative law training.

Discussions are still in process about whether there will be a third two-day basic training after the Cork conference, in the Galway area.

Forthcoming Trainings and Workshops

2007-12-31T10:42:00.000-08:00

In January, I will be offering two collaborative trainings:

January 19 & 20: Ventura, California [two-day basic and intermediate/refresher course in Collaborative Family Law]. Contact
www.collaborativefamilylawyers.com or telephone Ventura County Bar at (805) 650-759
January 25: Ann Arbor, Michigan [Transforming your Collaborative Divorce Practice---a one-day advanced seminar]. Contact Nichols, Sacks, Slank, Sendelbach & Buiteweg P.C, 1 (734) 994-3000

In late April, I will offer a basic collaborative law training in Belfast, Northern Ireland, just prior to the second European Collaborative Conference, to be held in Cork, Ireland.

And, on June 19-21, 2008 with David Fink as my co-trainer, I will present an intensive 2 1/2 day intermediate/advanced collaborative law workshop and skills training at the Straus Dispute Resolution Institute, Pepperdine Law School, Malibu, California. I am particularly excited about this event, which will be the first collaborative law training to be offered as part of the Straus Institute's Annual Professional Skills Program.

This annual event brings together more than 25 experienced conflict resolution trainers offering a wide range of simultaneous workshops and trainings for participants from as many as 28 states and 6 foreign nations. There will be ample opportunity for socializing and networking with participants from other workshops as well as an unusual opportunity for in-depth work with me and David on honing your collaborative legal skills and understandings.

Attendance at these workshops and trainings is strictly limited, so register early if you are interested. For more information, go to
http://law.pepperdine.edu/straus/training_and_conferences/ and click on "21st Annual Professional Skills Program"

Not Every Collaborative Client Will Be Happy

2007-12-31T10:18:00.000-08:00

Gary Direnfeld, a collaborative social worker from Ontario, Canada, posted the following comments in response to an angry blog posting from a woman in Connecticut who felt unhappy about her experience with collaborative divorce.

His are wise words. As collaborative practice becomes increasingly mainstream, collaborative lawyers and other collaborative professionals are going to see more clients who are extremely challenging. Some may be having a particularly hard time dealing with divorce-related stress and conflict; others may be mentally ill.

With the right configuration of professional helpers, we can often assist people who have the capacity and will to work toward resolution achieve good results even in the face of very challenging circumstances, but we can't work miracles. Something like the 80/20 rule is probably at work here: 80% of the serious problems in collaborative practice arise in 20% of our cases. I visualize our clients on a bell-shaped curve, and I believe that for those on the most challenging end of that curve, no professionals and no institutions or processes can do much to alter the causes and conditions that lead to unsatisfactory divorce experiences. All we can do is our best.

As an early mentor once advised me, "Pauline, never work harder toward settlement than your client is working."

Gary's thoughts:

On roughly an annual basis I survey a sample of my past year's clients.

I mail a questionnaire containing 7 questions and provide a space for comments. I include a stamped self-addressed envelope to facilitate replies. This year I mailed out 30 questionnaires and received 13 replies.

I use the feedback to inform my practice and processes.

Invariably I receive wonderful feedback. In fact, some 92% of the folks I work with tell me my service has been very helpful in resolving the presenting problem.

Notwithstanding, I always receive 1 or 2 scathing replies, totally lambasting me and every aspect of my service. In view of those scathing replies I review my clinical notes to see what I had done with the respective client and remind myself of their issues and their manner of presentation.

I have learned that I am quite unhelpful in about 8% of cases. However, common to those cases is the fact that those clients had multiple prior treatment failures, were remarkably resistant to taking responsibility for their own contribution to family or marital distress and were non-compliant with treatment recommendations.

Despite our best efforts, there will be those persons for whom our best efforts fail. Unfortunately also common to these persons is their propensity to project or lay blame on all those around them. Further, they can be a very vocal as they project their discontent. I certainly have been vilified by the odd client who wanted nothing of what I had to say. Given we work with some of the most cantankerous people and situations, this comes as no surprise.

In view of same, it still remains constructive to hear their complaints. These difficult clients are the same ones who teach us our most valuable lessons. From them we learn the boundaries of our own helpfulness and we may even eek out some lessons in terms of how to better approach these kinds of personalities and situations.

75 New Collaborative Lawyers to be Trained in NYC

2007-11-19T16:54:00.000-08:00

On November 29 and 30, 2007, under the sponsorship of Justice Judith Kay, Chief Justice of the New York State Supreme Court, a group of 75 family law attorneys will receive basic (12-hour) training in collaborative family law, as part of an initiative by Justice Kay to create the first publicly funded collaborative law center for low income divorcing couples, in New York City.

I'm honored to be invited to teach at this training, which the court is providing at no cost to participants. The lawyers participating in the program were chosen based on applications; the expectation is that in return for being trained at public expense, they will provide pro bono services in the new center. An interdisciplinary collaborative team training is being planned for early to mid 2008.

Finding my book at the best price

2007-11-07T18:17:00.000-08:00

Epinions is now showing comparative pricing for my book,

Collaborative Divorce: The Revolutionary New Way to Restructure your Family, Resolve Legal Issues, and Move On With Your Life,

co-authored by psychologist Peggy Thompson.

If you want to purchase bulk copies for free distribution to potential clients (a very low cost way to increase public awareness of and interest in collaborative divorce), this is an easy way to find them at lowest cost to you. Here is the link:
http://www0.epinions.com/Collaborative_Divorce_The_New_Win_win_Approach_to_Family_Restructuring_And_Resolving_Legal_Issues_Without_Going_to_Court_no_author_listed

American Bar Association Ethics Opinion Confirms Collaborative Law is Ethical Mode of Practice

2007-10-31T10:34:00.000-07:00

In the words of Boston collaborative lawyer David Hoffman, "The civilized resolution of conflict in American society recently took a giant step forward with the issuance of an important ethics opinion by the American Bar Association (ABA) upholding the use of "collaborative law" agreements by lawyers."

The opinion, issued in August 2007, affirms that lawyers do not need to be gladiators in order to satisfy fully their ethical duty to represent clients diligently. Rather, it is entirely ethical for lawyers to work solely toward an out of court settlement that is acceptable to the clients, if that is what their clients have directed them to do. Provided the clients are fully informed about their conflict resolution alternatives and make an informed choice of collaborative law, there is no ethical rule that prevents lawyers from being hired solely to work toward settlement, and to be barred by the collaborative participation agreement from taking the matter to court.

The ABA ethics opinion squarely rejects as wrongly decided a maverick advisory opinion issued in early 2008 by the Colorado Bar Association, the sole such opinion finding ethical barriers to the practice of collaborative law. The Colorado opinion has caused some unease among practitioners, even though it was never binding even in Colorado. This new and far more authoritative opinion from the American Bar Association should put those concerns to rest.

To read more about the opinion, see David Hoffman's op-ed piece in the Christian Science Monitor:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1009/p09s01-coop.html

Title:	A healing approach to the law
Author:	David A. Hoffman
Publication:	The Christian Science Monitor
Publisher:	The Christian Science Monitor
Date:	Oct 9, 2007

Collaborative Divorce Becoming Known to United Nations Job-Seekers

2007-10-31T10:27:00.000-07:00

Several collaborative divorce author/trainers are being featured on a Geneva-based website that posts job listings offered by the United Nations as well as a number of international human rights/humanitarian NGO's. This is another example of collaborative practice becoming increasingly visible in the mainstream international conflict resolution community. Many thanks to whoever is responsible for adding our publications to the "authors" section of this website. Check it out:
http://unjobs.org/authors/pauline-h.-tesler

Collaborative Divorce Doesn't Have to be "Nicey Nicey" to Work

2007-10-30T08:03:00.000-07:00

Wendy Spencer, a divorce financial analyst, has posted an illuminating story of a difficult and painful divorce handled the collaborative way. The marriage ended badly---the husband had engaged in a hurtful and deceitful affair---but the divorce process, though challenging, achieved important goals identified by the wife.

You don't have to feel friendly toward your divorcing spouse to want a civilized, integrity-based divorce. Strong negative emotions may be present, but that doesn't mean divorcing spouses have to spend their savings on emotion-fueled legal battles. Collaborative divorce team services helped the couple Spencer writes about to achieve a good resolution without war.

She describes collaborative divorce as "mediation on steroids." Read her blog entry for the full story: http://spencerdivorcemediator.com/?p=24.

COLLABORATIVE MENTORING, CONSULTATION, AND MINI-TRAINING AT YOUR OWN DESK

2007-07-24T11:26:00.000-07:00

If you have a need

for collaborative consultation, mentoring or skills training that addresses specific targeted challenges in collaborative practice, you may be interested in customized sessions that I am offering via telephone or video conference.

This is a convenient and cost-effective way for individuals and small or medium size groups to enhance the effectiveness of their collaborative services to clients. These sessions can also address challenges within practice groups, in order to make them more functional, more vibrant, and more useful to members.

The sessions can be 30 or 60 minutes in length for groups, and as brief as 15 minutes for individuals. Telephone sessions can be scheduled at short notice, subject to calendar availability. Desktop video conference sessions require two weeks’ notice. One month advance notice required for more elaborate video conferencing requests.

Illustrative topics for sessions include:

Case-specific mentoring for collaborative lawyers and/or interdisciplinary collaborative team members regarding cases that are in trouble, whether because of difficult clients, or difficult issues, or difficulties between or among the collaborative professionals.

Consultation with individual practitioners on case-specific issues, as above.

Consultation with individuals or small groups on how to get a collaborative practice group started in a community.

Consultation with individuals or small groups in how to improve visibility of collaborative practice in the community.

Consultation with practice groups on dealing with difficult members.

Consultation with practice groups on protocols and quality of services to clients.

Consultation with practice groups on developing a coherent and consistent core message about collaborative divorce services to clients.

Consultation with practice groups about strategic planning to set and achieve public education goals

Mini trainings on specific practice issues such as:

. Handling the “buy-in” phase of a collaborative case effectively—and ethically
. Developing effective process anchors and front-end commitments with clients at early stages of collaborative case
. Managing client expectations regarding how quickly and in what sequence substantive issues will be addressed
. Educating clients effectively about honoring the roadmap and sequence of the collaborative process
. Recognizing potential problem early—and strategies for handling them
. Protocols for screening clients
. Helping clients move from global values to specific goals
. Effective use of private consultations and second opinions in collaborative practice
. Working with the “more law, not less” concept
. Techniques for handling –and avoiding apparent impasse
. Practicum in brainstorming technique
. And many more……

Costs and Financial Terms:

My fee (whether for mentoring, consulting, or training) is my customary hourly rate charged to my clients, to be paid via credit card at the time of scheduling the session. This is a flat fee, that can be shared at your end among any number of participants.

My fees will discounted by 15% for packages of 5 or more sessions of equal length that are prepaid before December 31, 2007. (The sessions can take place at any time in 2007 or 2008 but must be prepaid and calendared by December 31.) In the event of cancellation after the first session, there will be a cancellation fee equal to the amount of the discount for already-completed sessions.

Telephone conferences and simple desktop video conferencing require no additional costs to be paid. More sophisticated video conferencing fees vary according to specific requirements of the group, and according to the fees charged by my local video conferencing facility.

For more information contact Pauline H. Tesler, teslercollaboration@lawtsf.com

Or call 415-383-5600

Family Psychologist magazine recommends our book

2007-07-21T13:12:00.000-07:00

Dr. Barry Ginsberg has reviewed Collaborative Divorce, the book I co-authored with Peggy Thompson, in the summer 2007 issue of The Family Psychologist, which is the bulletin of the family psychology division of the American Psychological Association.

Calling it "an outstanding contribution to our field," Dr. Ginsberg not only has it on his own bookshelf but calls it "recommended reading" for both clients, and colleagues working with couples and families. Though Dr. Ginsberg emphasizes the value of the collaborative model presented in the book and the clarity with which it is explained, he also notes that the book would be very helpful as a "personal coach" regardless of whether a divorcing couple ultimately chooses collaborative divorce or not.

Psychologists who plan to attend the August annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, in San Francisco, may want to note on their calendars that Peggy Thompson and I, along with several colleagues, will present a workshop on collaborative divorce Sunday morning, August 19th.

The review can be found at page 17 of Vol 23, No. 3 of The Family Psychologist. Click on the book review link to your left [in "Visit Pauline Tesler's web links] and scroll down to page 17 to read the entire review.

IACP Ethics Task Force Responds to Maverick Colorado Ethics Opinion

2007-06-26T14:35:00.000-07:00

In February 2007, a committe of the Colorado Bar Association published an ethics opinion critical of collaborative law--the sole negative opinion to appear in the seventeen years that collaborative lawyers have been doing this work.

Many have criticized the opinion as poorly reasoned and a masterpiece of a technical legalistic approach that takes no account of clients as thinking people capable of making intelligent conflict resolution process choices on their own behalf.

Now, people concerned about the opinion have a useful resource to turn to which should help rebut the popular misconception in cyberspace that somehow the Colorado opinion means that the practice of collaborative law is unethical. Of course it's not. Not even in Colorado.

Read the opinion and use it. Here is the link (the article will appear in the next issue of the Collaborative Review):

http://www.collaborativepractice.com/documents/IACPEthicsTaskForcearticle.pdf

Pauline Tesler's Collaborative Training Programs

2007-06-26T10:24:00.002-07:00

My current collaborative training programs are described below. All programs include either information about or instruction in interdisciplinary collaboration. Mental health and financial professionals are welcome at all trainings but can be “trained” to IACP standards only in interdisciplinary events that include a trainer from one’s own profession.

Groups or organizations interested in sponsoring a training can reach me at:
teslercollaboration@lawtsf.com

“Starting Out Right as a Collaborative Lawyer”: an Introductory (Level One, Basic) two-day training for lawyers providing a sound foundation in the nuts and bolts of collaborative legal practice, in a broad conceptual framework focused on powerfully motivating participants to make the paradigm shift. Meets all IACP standards for trainings, trainers, and practitioners. This program starts with “why”: why current approaches to divorce conflict resolution don’t really help couples reach optimal lasting solutions, and why collaborative family law is so powerfully effective in doing so. The conceptual material is presented in a lively, challenging manner that spotlights unexamined assumptions about what a family lawyer’s job really is, before moving into demonstrations, roleplays, and discussion that provide a solid foundation for launching a collaborative practice.

Intensive “Starting Out Right as a Collaborative Lawyer”: an Introductory (Level One, Basic) three-day training for lawyers that provides an outstanding foundation for launching a collaborative practice. In addition to the components of the two-day program, this program offers expanded roleplay of an entire collaborative case, plus hands-on introduction to interest-based negotiations. This program can also be offered in a four-day format, which includes more extended training in client-centered interest-based negotiations.

“Becoming Excellent at Collaborative Practice”: an Intermediate/Advanced training for lawyers in both one-day and two-day formats, intended for lawyers who have completed three to six collaborative cases. This program focuses on the understandings and skills essential for high-quality collaborative work, with special emphasis on “Act One” (opening moves) phase of a collaborative case. Through demonstrations, roleplay, discussion, and other experiences, participants will develop enhanced capabilities in such areas as: informed consent to collaborative representation, clarifying your core message regarding collaborative law and interdisciplinary collaboration, building a powerful foundation with the client, using process anchors effectively, developing a congruent protocol for first contacts with clients and first fourway meetings, identifying difficult clients and handling buy-in decisions with them, building effective client commitment to the collaborative process, and ensuring clear process understandings with colleagues.

“Taking it to the Next Level: Highest Potential Collaborative Legal Practice”: an Advanced Seminar for lawyers who have completed ten or more collaborative cases. This is a one-day event, customized for the needs of those who attend, which focuses on taking participants from where they are to a more sophisticated level of understanding and skill in collaborative practice. Highly interactive and spontaneous, this seminar focuses in the morning session on identifying the replicable characteristics of participants’ most successful cases and the remediable characteristics of the least successful cases. The afternoon session is organized around particular problems that arise in collaborative cases, such as: identifying and working with difficult clients and difficult professionals; case-specific approaches to impasse; good faith issues and how to address them; the case that goes south; when and how to terminate; communication and boundary issues on the professional team; alternatives to termination; and other complex challenges.

“Building Vibrant Collaborative Practices and Practice Groups”: a one or two-day workshop, for both interdisciplinary and lawyer-only practice groups, focusing on the interface between individual clarity, conviction, and commitment to collaborative practice; strong, participatory, focused practice groups; and powerful communication of the collaborative message to the community. This popular workshop integrates skill-building aspects (strengthening practitioners’ understanding of the unique conflict resolution power of collaborative practice and their ability to communicate it effectively to clients and others) with strategic planning components (building congruent and powerful individual and practice group core messages, enhancing structure and focus of practice group, building a targeted public education campaign and member commitment to its implementation). These workshops can be customized for the needs of particular communities and can be adapted to a retreat format or expanded to a three-day intensive workshop.

"Making Your Practice Group All it Can Be": a one or two-day workshop , for both interdisciplinary and lawyer-only practice groups, co-presented with psychologist Peggy Thompson, Ph.D. This workshop includes interactive exercises and Powerpoint presentation, as well as spontaneous roleplay and discussion, all aimed at identifying and addressing the challenges the members perceive as standing in the way of the practice group moving to the "next level". The group itself identifies the areas to be addressed, which may have to do with building trust among the professionals, getting the message out accurately and powerfully to the community and referral sources, working more smoothly and effectively as a team with clients and one another, or any of a broad spectrum of other issues. The focus is on communicating clearly and honestly about issues in the practice group and planning strategies for solutions. Dr. Thompson brings an Appreciative Inquiry perspective to the workshop. This workshop is less structured than the preceding workshop and focuses more on communications and trust-building among practice group members.

“Harnessing the Power of the Team: Evidence-Based Interdisciplinary Collaborative Divorce Team Training”: this is a two-day or three-day training meeting all IACP standards for trainers, trainings, and practitioners. The training provides a complete beginning foundation in interdisciplinary team collaborative divorce practice, using presentation, demonstration, roleplay, discussion, and other modalities. This training is unique in several respects. First, it provides instruction in all modes of interdisciplinary collaborative practice, from “referral mode” to integrated team collaboration, with emphasis on the latter, the “Rolls Royce” of interdisciplinary practice. Second, the focus is on starting with what clients need, and building interdisciplinary services in configurations that have been shown to meet those needs most effectively. Third, the training recognizes that lawyers need more than a three-day team training to master the minimum skills and understandings needed for competent collaborative legal practice. For that reason, the training is intended for lawyers who have already taken an introductory or basic collaborative law training, as we believe this is a particularly effective way for lawyers to learn interdisciplinary team collaboration. On Day One of the training each discipline works separately; the lawyers’ day is an intermediate collaborative law training, while the other two professions have an introductory training in collaborative practice. Day Two introduces each profession to the role of the other two professions in collaborative divorce. The remainder of the training focuses on building strong, effective professional teams and developing understandings and skills needed to work effectively with clients in an interdisciplinary model.

Followup mentoring via telephone bridge or video conferencing can be built into the training design for all events.

British Collaborative Lawyers on Wheels

2007-06-26T08:28:00.000-07:00

Legal eagles join big bike ride for NSPCC
By Katharine Lawley
Comment

Solicitors from different firms in Salisbury, Bournemouth and Southampton met at Brockenhurst Railway Station to start a bike ride across the New Forest to raise funds for the NSPCC. Picture by Ian Jackson DB2279P3

SOLICITORS from Salisbury, Southampton and Bournemouth swapped their business suits for cycling gear to pedal around the New Forest in aid of NSPCC.

The group of collaborative family lawyers, some joined by partners, set out from the cycle hire shop at Brockenhurst train station on the 21-mile circular route, much of it off-road.

They wore white T-shirts featuring the NSPCC Big Bike Ride logo and the slogan Collaborative Family Lawyers - doing it altogether better'.

Among those taking part were Caroline Frost of Whitehead Vizard, Andrew Mercer and Lisa Carter of Trethowans, Amanda Bryant and Jason Copp of Bonallack & Bishop, Tina Coward of Sampson Coward, and Emma Wilders-Pratt and Tricia Gower of Parker Bullen, all in Salisbury.

The solicitors are trained in collaborative law, the process whereby separating and divorcing couples and their legal representatives work as a team, rather than as opponents, to resolve the couples' differences.

Mrs Frost, head of Whitehead Vizard's family department, said that the Salisbury group raised about £1,500 and a further £1,000 was collected by the Southampton and Bournemouth lawyers.
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"It was good fun, but we were pretty exhausted by the end of it," she said. "Just before we started it was spitting with rain, but it held off for the ride.

"We had a few punctures and a bike chain fell off, but everyone finished.

"The fastest time was about two hours."

Mrs Frost said that a number of people stopped them to ask about collaborative family law as well as the NSPCC Big Bike Ride appeal.

Law as a Healing Profession

2007-06-19T17:38:00.000-07:00

Marjorie Silver, a law professor at Touro Law Center in New York, has recently compiled and published a textbook for law students who want to practice law without losing their souls. It is titled:

The Affective Assistance
of Counsel: Practicing Law
as a Healing Profession

and you can read it in full text by going to this link:

http://www.cap-press.com/pdf/1645.pdf

Chapter Eight is my contribution, entitled "Collaborative Law: Practicing Without Armor, Practicing With Heart."

This book and the course Marjorie teaches at Touro, called "Lawyering As A Happy, Healthy, Healing and Ethical Profession", are part of a true sea change in the legal profession.

Other manifestations (google them if they sound interesting to you):

*therapeutic jurisprudence (in law schools and courts around the world)
*restorative justice
*comprehensive law
*law as a spiritual practice (courses and retreats popping up everywhere)
*the writings of David Hall, former Dean of Northeastern University Law School
*the journalism of Steven Keeva
*the teaching and writing of Susan Daicoff, Bruce Winick, David Wexler
*unbundling and the work of Woody (Forrest) Mosten
*a summer program at the Harvard Negotiation project called "The New Lawyer:Expanding Conceptions of Law Practice" with David Hoffman, David Hall & Susan Daicoff

This is an exciting time to be a lawyer, folks. Sandra Day O'Connor put it this way: “The courts of this country should not be the places where resolution of disputes begins. They should be the places where the disputes end after alternative methods of resolving disputes have been considered and tried.” Even Warren Burger felt it when he proclaimed, "should lawyers not be healers?" And collaborative lawyers are at the crest of this wave.