Lawlady's Divorce Blog

Play Recommendation

I saw a play last week:  Mitzi's Abortion.  Now, I'm no theatre critic.  I've probably only seen four plays in the past 20 years.  But I bet money that you'll be seeing this play win awards someday.  My guess is it will hit Broadway.

Go see it at the Act if it hasn't left town already. 

Here's the deal about the play.  It tells the story about this woman's pregnancy from all angles. No guiding philosophy shoved down your throat.   There's room to see everyone's different point of view from the perspective of many different characters.

I think that complicated situations such as war, divorce, accidental deaths and such need to be viewed from many different eyes before we can fully grasp the enormity of a grave situation.  Remembering that our perspective isn't the only view of the situation can give a lift up and out of the feelings and stuckness one can experience during hard times. 

It was refreshing to see someone (the playwright, the actors) treating this world as a beautiful place filled with shades of colors and greys, not just all black and white.  We've gotten so polarized the world seems sharp and jagged.  From my perspective it isn't.  I'm glad that play is reminding us the world is round. 

Collaborative Law and the Litigator's High

Conflict causes an adrenaline rush.  I'm sure there are people who get hooked on the rush.  Particularly litigating attorneys.

I know many attorneys who say they like going to court.  Many get a high caused from the intense focus needed to  prepare and argue  to win.   Walking out of the courthouse after a successful morning at court, gives a feeling of having  been somewhere and done something.  From my personal experience, it's a type of satisfaction that makes me want to go order a steak.  Unless you lose and you believe you should have prepared better.  Then you just feel sick and don't want to eat.

My question for the legal profession is:  Are were serving our client's best interest if we are litigating possibly for reasons having to do were our own personal sense of thrill?  If the clients are fully informed would they choose to go forward with a court action? 

Yesterday, I had the refreshing experience of talking with a woman who was shopping attorneys and had been given quite realistic figures about the costs to litigate her family matter. She was quoted  in the range of $20,000 to $40,000 per side.  That's $60,000 to $80,000 to divorce a couple of upper-moderate means with significant conflict.  These realistic figures are helping her put collaborative law into perspective. 

Collaborative law is a process whereby the parties agree not to go to court or threaten to do so.  Then, the focus is on options that will facilitate the case settle which often includes sharing joint experts to provide relevant expertise and emotional support.  A great process because most of the divorce dollars are spent moving the case forward and preparing for the future of each party.

Probably the biggest difference between collaborative law and litigation is the treatment of stress and the management of conflict. In collaborative cases, the focus is on keeping the stress level down, understanding that people don't think as well when their emotions flared up.  In court-action, the opposite is the case.  The system provokes a party's emotions. In fact, it's tendency to rile people up is exactly the electric charge that ignites the chronic litigator's passion.

Hence the question,  who is litigation really best for?

Whew!!

Yesterday is over!!

For those of you waiting to here how my bad case turned out, the settlement went down like this.   My client came in and we worked from 8:30 to 12;40 finishing off all the documents and sending back a packet of signed, notarized, revised documents before the 1:00 deadline for arbitration.  My cover letter said, "If you client signs these, the case is over." We included language formerly rejected. 

It's amazing what a "sign here and you're done" packet can do for completing a project. Mr. Mean Lawyer was all friendly, as if he hadn't been a pig for the past month.  Whereas before he was insisting on certain terms,  today he admitted, "Yeah, I recall we agreed to different terms at mediation."  "So why the denial for the past week? was my thought. 

When I called to tell my client her case settled and we didn't have to undergo a fight about whether the arbitration was properly noted, my client said when she left my office, she stopped at a store and found a suit that she knew was her "divorce suit."  For her it was an omen.  Everything about the case shifted in tone.  She was once again forward thinking and engaged in the possibilities for life, not rehashing what was and how she got burned in the process.

The weather was colder and grayer today, but I'll tell you, after the recent  heat the day felt refreshing and renewed.  Literally and metaphorically.      

Life feels returned to normal.  Conflict over.

More on Attorney Ugliness

I want to gather a collection of stories about a certain attorney.  Do you think it would get me sued to post an ad in the back of the King County Bar Association calling for freaky stories about a certain attorney?  I smile, which is a certain indication it probably would get me sued.  I suppose I will have to make a generic call for weird lawyer stories of all lawyers, or any story about a particular lawyer.  If the stories all come back bad... well, so be it. 

Now publishing that anthology gets to me to question two.....

You can see where I'm headed. 

A crazy week at the ole' Lawlady Law Sweat Shop.  (Literally.  When it heats up, our office goes to amazing temperatures). 

Full Moon and Crazy Lawyers

I have been beseiged recently with psycho-dramas stirred up by what appears to be insane behavior by opposing counsel.  Ugly, ugly, ugly, snotty behavior, and tones of voices that suggest the person thinks I'm a pathetic, sniveling idiot.  "Why the retched tone of voice you narrow-minded small person who deserves to have your practic atrophe into vaporized nothingness?"  I ask myself as I listen to them substitute sensible, persuasive comments for behaviors that will help solidify them in my memory as a small, gross, horrible person who should be avoided.  I actually have an anti-rolodex. This is a list of people I carry around in my mind to remember to tell people to avoid at all costs. 

The full-moon provokes them further causing me to question "Do you just have poor judgment, manners and breeding, or are you mentally-disturbed and more inclined to  insanity caused at full moon?"

Now, you must understand, I've NEVER in my life (even as an amature astrologer) attributed weirdo behavior to a full-moon.  But this sudden rash of incompetant, flamboyent, stressed out lawyers has me thinking:  maybe there is something to that old folk's tale about werewolves.  Possibly, people on the mental-health fringe break down  during a fool moon.  If they are a lawyer by trade they do ridiculous legal maneuvers and call themselves sane.

Am I being too negative here?   Oops, I've broken.  It's a full-moon.

Does This Seem Fair?

Get this...

I have a case that settled. As part of the CR2A agreement  (a binding contract entered at mediation) if the two lawyers encountered problems drafting the final divorce papers, we were to send the issue back to the mediator for resolution through what's called binding arbitration. 

Last week, before I had received comments back from the other attorney about my proposed language changes, his office called to schedule the arbitration. The assistant asked about my availability the following Wednesday (tomorrow).  I said, "My client will have a new attorney for the arbitration. I can't give authority to schedule it on Wednesday.  Besides we haven't even fully exchanged positions." 

The response:  "I don't care. I'm going to set it anyway so we have something if needed."

Today I notified the other attorney 1) my client can't attend, she's working, 2) we're still negotiating. She only got the documents on Monday night and new proposals came in  today, 3) she already thinks the mediator is not fair to her.   We're canceling until she's ready."

He refused to accept my cancellation of the binding arbitration.  I wrote the mediator.  "Hey, we're not ready. We just got new proposed language on today. The issues aren't  fully discussed yet. How can we be in conflict, if we got new proposals just today?   Can you wait until we have a chance to brief you on the issue before you rule?  Besides,  this was all scheduled over my objection."

I'll let you know how it goes.   

For the record.  This type of  awfulness is what you get it you go to very well reputed attorneys.  It makes me ashamed to be an attorney.  If McDonald's cooked hamburgers with such efficiency, a Big Mac would cost $43.50. 

Divorce Garden

At the time I was buying the business property at 68th and Roosevelt-- and I'm talking about the actual weekend the offers were going back and forth-- I was speaking at the International Alliance of Collaborative Professional Conference in Boston.  I remember being at the front of the room speaking about divorce ritual with a group of divorce attorneys and thinking that I wanted to offer clients a space to process their strong feelings during the process. 

The pain of divorce is a shadow pain in our culture.  People going through severe break ups or divorce can have intense emotions but largely these feelings go ignored or missed by others.  Our culture does not embrace the harder emotions (typically) and of all the types of grief, the grief of break up and divorce is probably one of the more unacknowledged varierties. 

So... I had the idea for the public garden space.  A sweet spot dedicated to the passing of relationships. 

Then I moved the office here and found that we had enough issues to worry about from wiring to airconditioning.  The back garden fell off the radar.  So far off the radar that I assumed that it was a temporary flight of fancy that wasn't going to manifest itself.   

Something, however,  has happened recently.  The back garden is beginning to take form.  I've installed 30 or so major plantings and ordered some signage. It's beginning to take shape. 

Now I realize that it makes more sense to open the garden before it is complete and invite divorcing people to come with  their plants to add to the space.  The space will be richer if many hands contribute. At this point, the opening date is slated for September 23, the first day of fall. 

If you are hurting from a break up, one of my clients, or someone who loves gardening, I invite you to stop by and create with me a public space dedicated to the resurrection of fallen love. 

Nothing is sweeter in life than love, and when love ends, fails or completes, art can be made from the vestiges of the relationship.  It's good for the soul and honors that flip side of love:  the ending process. 

If you would like to know more about this project, call me at 206/932-9699.   

Latest News

I apologize for being away so long.  It's been a busy summer.

I have good news to report however. I'm being interviewed by Seattle Times tonight on collaborative law.  I'll tell you how it goes!

Look forward to hearing from me soon.  I've missed you.