Collaborative Practice
Collaborative Practice is a method of practicing law where the parties and the lawyers representing them sign a contract in which they agree to work towards settlement. If the parties are unable to settle and adversarial proceedings are to be filed, the lawyers are required to withdraw. New lawyers must be obtained for trial.
In this method, the attorneys must focus on settlement and are free to use their creative problem solving skills. Communication is respectful and the process is future-focused. It works best if several lawyers in the community are trained in collaborative law so there are options for the clients and lawyers to work together.
The International Academy of Collaborative Professionals [https://www.collaborativepractice.com] is a network of collaborative professionals with practitioners in more than 20 countries. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of trainers who provide learning opportunities to practitioners, starting with an introductory training and extending beyond basic skills to more advanced tools.
I hated my litigation practice. I was ready to quit. Then I thought, if I'm willing to quit the practice of law, maybe there's some way to do it outrageously.
Collaborative Practice is suitable for many types of law and experiments are applying it to many civil contexts: probate, employment, medical error, and business. Still, it most often occurs in the domestic area. There are several different models of collaborative law. In some places, the prevailing model in the community is the two-lawyer model. In other places, there is a multi-disciplinary team approach using a counseling team and financial advisor to work with a family in a collaborative process. You may also hear the terms Collaborative Practice, Collaborative Divorce or Civil Collaborative Law. Collaborative Practice is actually the preferred term since so much of collaborative law is actually interdisciplinary and it is more inclusive to say “collaborative practice”. Collaborative Divorce refers to the full team interdisciplinary model of family law. Civil Collaborative Law refers to non-divorce applications of collaborative practice.
