COLLABORATIVE LAW: Ethical and Practical Issues
EXCERPTS FROM COLLABORATIVE LAW:
Ethical and Practical Issues
We're getting divorced. Is using collaborative law a good idea for my spouse and me?
http://www.thelizlibrary.org/collaborative-law/
Alternate dispute resolution that occurs outside of court also provides a private cover for lawyers who screw up, churn fees, waste time, or just obtain less than adequate results for their clients; it's easy to chalk up complaints to the emotional issues of uncooperative or "crazy" clients, and there is no third party oversight. (Indeed, privacy is one of the touted benefits of the collaborative process). Family law in particular also is an area in which a lack of creative, attentive and zealous representation can be covered up and rationalized under the pretense that "it's better for the kids if everyone just gets along." (In my opinion, this can be way too touchy-feely. People don't necessarily need to be amicable or lack serious issues in order to come to the table and negotiate like businesspersons making a deal.) Additionally, too many of the otherwise competent family law practitioners seem to be more interested these days in sucking outrageous fees from a captive marital pot than focusing on achieving functional, workable end goals in their clients' and clients' children's emotional and economic interests.
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Another consideration is that many of the collaborative groups now are including non-lawyer financial and mental health members. This goes beyond lawyers, psychologists and others cultivating informal feeder referral relationships with each other -- which are problematic enough from the ethical standpoint. But worse, these collaborative law groups are, at the heart, active formal business referral organizations and working groups that strive to maintain something more than cordial business networking associations among the members. The collaborative law groups exist specifically to refer business to each other, keep each other in like-minded ideological and procedural lockstep, bring each other in to work on cases, and jointly market their very different respective businesses. A number of serious ethics issues are coming up because of this, and (until my current article is finished) some of the ethical problems are touched on in my article on therapeutic jurisprudence and the unhealthy cross-referral feeder relationships that arise out of the multidisciplinary practice
Ethical and Practical Issues
We're getting divorced. Is using collaborative law a good idea for my spouse and me?
http://www.thelizlibrary.org/collaborative-law/
Alternate dispute resolution that occurs outside of court also provides a private cover for lawyers who screw up, churn fees, waste time, or just obtain less than adequate results for their clients; it's easy to chalk up complaints to the emotional issues of uncooperative or "crazy" clients, and there is no third party oversight. (Indeed, privacy is one of the touted benefits of the collaborative process). Family law in particular also is an area in which a lack of creative, attentive and zealous representation can be covered up and rationalized under the pretense that "it's better for the kids if everyone just gets along." (In my opinion, this can be way too touchy-feely. People don't necessarily need to be amicable or lack serious issues in order to come to the table and negotiate like businesspersons making a deal.) Additionally, too many of the otherwise competent family law practitioners seem to be more interested these days in sucking outrageous fees from a captive marital pot than focusing on achieving functional, workable end goals in their clients' and clients' children's emotional and economic interests.
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