CDTT Inc. COLLABORATIVE PRACTICE
What is Collaborative Practice? Find A Professional Sample Agreement Links
What is Collaborative Practice?
  • General Overview
  • New Roles of Professionals
  • Steps in Collaborative Practice
  • First & Subsequent Four-Way Meetings
  • Advantages of Collaborative Practice
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    New Roles of Professionals - Page 2

    The different roles lawyers have working in the Collaborative Practice Process compared to the traditional Court system.
    Collaborative Practice
    1. Act as Process Brokers
      • Clients come to lawyers for experienced guidance in making a major life transition
      • Partnership between both clients and both lawyers - shared process of decision making
      • Presents alternate dispute resolution choices and offers variety of options for professional legal assistance
      • Collaboration first; court as a last resort. Strategy is to collaborate toward mutually beneficial outcome and acceptable solutions
      • Values team approach
      • Encourages respect for other client and other lawyer
      • Maintains and explains role of counselor, advisor, negotiator; Client's problems remain client's
      • Interest-Based Negotiation
      • Assists client in creating choices. Changes need to come from client first for agreement to result
    		Court

    1. Argues to Persuade
      • Focus on specific, quantifiable outcome of case
      • Sees forgiveness as weakness. Other people must change for agreement to result
      • Strategy is to devise and communicate credible threats
      • Aligns with client's view of the facts
      • Supports client's self-concept as victim and in all beliefs about others. Empathizes with client's view of origin of and solutions to problems
      • Takes directions which may arise from client's anger, fear or grief. May foster or disregard client's unrealistic or illusory perceptions
      • May support client's desire for revenge and undue advantage
      • Sees client's low self-esteem as a given in addressing problems connected to it
      • Encounters with client often drain the lawyer's energy
    Collaborative Practice
    1. Give Legal Advice
      • Invites client to understand the law as only one of many choices for clients
      • Considers the legal issues in a divorce only a subset of a larger, longer and more complex human transition
      • Sees the lawyer as a member of a client-centered team
      • Sees any neutral expert as a member of a client-centered team
    		Court

    1. Act as Process Broker
      • Assumes litigation is the only choice from the first meeting with client and prepares for a litigation battle
      • Positional bargaining in the slide to court
      • Takes on client's problem. "Don't worry, I'll handle everything"
      • Instructs client to keep cards "close to the chest." Rehearses and stage-manages client's communications
      • Treats client's work with an expert as an occasion for exerting maximum control, advance strategizing, and risk-avoidance planning
      • Sees experts as intrusive unless they are individually retained and under the lawyer's control
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