According to the attached article, most attorneys are skilled at negotiation and work hard to help clients settle their cases without ever stepping foot in a courtroom. The following comment I received in response comments I made in a recent discussion on the listserv for the Family Law Section of the Los Angeles County Bar Association is true also true Notwithstanding the fact that most family law attorneys are characterized as litigators, most family law cases settle…. Please don’t think that settling cases as a brokering of deals is at all the same as the type of resolutions we can help our clients make if we better understood needs and interests based negotiation. With regard to litigators settling cases, I think I should share with you the private email I received in that same listserv discussion: I am also a graduate of several of Woody’s trainings. Your commentary is spot on. My practice is exclusively family law litigation and mediation. The skills that I learned from Woody have made me a better litigator in the sense that I am more competent to settle cases either at the courthouse or in settlement meetings with opposing counsel.” The following is a quote from one of my articles: “I work as a consulting attorney on mediated cases and when I mediate, I prefer when the clients retain mediation-friendly attorneys. As Diana Mercer said in her comment to my article titled “What Is ‘Collaborative Divorce’ Without Collaboration?”, a mediation-friendly attorney understands their clients needs, interests, values and goals, and makes sure that the agreement accomplishes their clients desired result. When the right attorneys are involved, this also addresses power imbalance issues. I should point out that I do the exact same thing when I am representing someone in a case that is not in mediation or the collaborative divorce process. I would also like to point out that I was able to get my client a 1/3 increase in her spousal support and many other things, while acting as her consulting attorney on a case that Diana Mercer was mediating AND did so in order to satisfy my clients needs and interests, rather than legal rights. Also, my proposed changes were almost always completely agreeable to her husband because I made sure to explain the reasoning behind the proposed changes and provided the supporting research (not legal research, mind you). In doing so, her husband was much more receptive because she wasn’t asking for something, just because the law said she was entitled to it. After the matter was settled, Diana posted the following on Facebook: Thanks, Mark Brian Baer. That was a TOUGH one! But Im glad everyone hung in and was patient. The final result was worth it. You were amazing to work with, and truly Collaborative! Youre a gem. There is a HUGE difference between being collaborative and being adversarial and the results differ as a result. It is a very big mistake to believe that the results are better through adversarial negotiations than they are through collaborative efforts. However, without proper training, how do professionals trained in the adversarial approach learn a collaborative approach -- and I don’t mean the “collaborative divorce process.” “Collaborative Divorce” is a process and may or may not be collaborative. I am referring to something more real and transferable. jdsupra/legalnews/sowing-the-seeds-for-settlement-31902/?utm_source=JD-Supra-eMail-Digests
Posted on: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 23:08:39 +0000
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