Lawlady's Divorce Blog

Collaborative Law Training

This Friday at 4:30 I am presenting at the 13th Annual ADR conference:  Creative Conflict Management.  My presentation is titled:  Litigator to Collaborator, Changing from the Inside Out.  If you are in the Seattle area and interested in mediation and transforming your practice, you might enjoy the two day conference. 

I've been thinking about my presentation.  In case you can't make it, here is what I will be highlighting:

1)  Make no assumptions about what the other collaborative law attorney is thinking.  Check out and clarify the hidden assumptions.  Do you both agree to withhold information about the law until the clients have had a chance to air their grievances and start investigating the facts?  Or are you going to coach your client early in the case as to how the law will apply?  Imagine the conflicts that could arise if one client feels empowered and knowledgeable about the law while the other person feels powerless and misinformed, having been told by his or her attorney that there isn't any need to "know the law." 

What other situations could breed conflict if the lawyers operate from two different perspectives?   What about a commitment for both attorneys to seek coaching if they can't agree or work together well?  We have an agreement to transparency in collaborative law; does this mean that you have to volunteer that your client will begin working hard to get a raise right after the divorce?   Is it OK to disclose this type of information only if asked?

2)  Bad, annoying habits make for bad collaborative lawyers.  Personality traits that irritate and distance people from you in your personal relationships will have the same effect, most likely, in your collaborative career.  Figure out what these are.  Change.  Or at least learn how to reign yourself in a bit.  Examples:  talking excessively or having to be the expert.  Learn to let go and let someone else be smarter or more articulate sometimes. 

3)  As the mother of collaborative law says, "what makes me a better person, also makes me a better collaborative lawyer."  We aren't going to shift into a new language overnight.  Collaborative law often occurs during tense sessions with emotional clients.   People are uptight.  It's hard to practice new language skills in those situations.   It's easier if you've gradually been adding new vocabulary and phrases slowly during less stressful times.  Only the phrases you've added to long term memory are going to be the ones that come to mind when you start sweating it out in a heated 4-way meeting.  Cultivate an appreciation for conciliatory language.  Here are some of my favorites:  So what I hear you saying is... I think we have an agreement on... I want to compliment both of you on well you were able to work through... Do you see where you are in agreement about...  I understand you are angry about XYZ, can you tell us where things have worked successfully this past week... You say ABC, but I'm noticing DEF, can you explain this difference?

If you are interested in seeing my presentation, call me at 206/932-9699 and I'll see if I can get you into my session.  Otherwise, you can sign up for the whole two-day event.  The conference website is at www.mediate.com/nwadr.  It starts this Friday (April 29) at 1:00. 

Symphony Thinkers

Dear Mr. Daniel Pink,

I want to thank you, again, for mentioning me in your book A Whole New Mind:  Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age.  You used me as an example of a symphony thinker- one of those people who has the ability "to put together the pieces... to synthesize rather than analyze... to invent something new by combining elements nobody else thought to pair."  The conductor, as opposed to the violinist. 

In your book, you identified other types of modern thinking that will be an advantage in the new marketplace.  I've been thinking about your theories.

Here is what being a symphony thinker means to me:

"Symphony thinking"  is about being able to draw from a wide range of fields.  It's being an artist of  information.  If my client needs a pep talk, I reach into myself and pull out something meaningful from Joseph Campbell,  Og Mandino, or the latest book I'm reading.  Mentally,  I'm a mini-library of motivational stuff.  If healing is what I intuit  you need, I draw on my reservoir of therapeutic experiences and offer  something useful from there.  But if this client in this situation needs good old fashioned number-crunching.  Alright.  I can whiz at the calculator.   

My breadth is wide.  I can accompany clients just about anywhere they need to go. Sometimes, my services are to escort them over to a person who can help better than I can.  My referral partners will take good care of them. 

I may not be the sharpest legal mind in yellow pages, but what I am good at is artfully offering a wide swath of options, opinions and assistance.  The same is true for my symphonic business friends Laila and Casey. 

Laila gives career advice (she's a vocational counselor), but she can just as easily talk with you about love, passion, and pleasure.  Casey can design your marketing material, but she just as easily slips into making meaningful  introductions to amazing people you've simply got to meet.  Neither limits their services to just the minimum.  They have so much more to offer. 

I think symphony is about offering clients and customers more than just the basics.  Web design needed?  We can talk about your brand identity or the legal trademark issues involved too...

Business incorporation needed?  We can sell you some good coaching services for just a few hundred dollars more.  Guitar lessons?  We'll record your first demo CD on the side if you like. 

Symphony thinkers?  We're wide-varietied folks.   We specialize, but in a board sort of way. 

Mr. Pink, I think you were right about symphony folks, about those type of people who see the big picture and reconcile the parts into a cohesive unit or whole.  However, I think you might be focused a bit too externally.  I think the real symphony work happens on the inside.  We've accumulated so many instruments into our personal orchestra that we can play a symphony if we have to, or just be one lonely clarinet if need be.  On the inside, we are rich with experiences.  Our perspective is textured, not flat.

Sincerely,

Stefani Quane
Bringing hope to a disillusioned industry:  the Law. 
www.lawlady.com

Disciplined Lawyers

Todd Rowden is the best lawyer out of my graduating class at UW-Madison School of Law, class of 1989.  He was one of those lawyers who set his work schedule the first month out of law school and hasn't varied it since.  Up at 5:40, 20 minutes of callastenics, shower, cereal, 6:40 train to downtown Chicago from Winnetka.  When he moved his practice out to Schomburg, the train time changed.  He got to sleep a bit later. His work day has stayed equally as consistent over the years.   

Attoney Jeff Hermann out of Seattle practices the same way.  He's well on his way to being another "super lawyer" like Todd.  Jeff shuts off his phone for many hours a day as he drafts personal injury demand letters. Each one takes about seven hours he says. According to Jeff,  most personal injury attorneys wait until the evening or the weekend to do this essential task of lawyering.  "They fritter away the work day answering the phone and responding to crises  on someone else's time schedule.  I don't want to get into that routine," he told me tonight. 

I see the brilliance in Jeff's plan.  Why save the core of your work for non-work hours?  That only eats away at your personal time. 

I like how Julie Morgenstern - the organizational Goddess - refers to personal time in her book Making Work Work.  Personal time, according to Morgenstern, is where we get balance in our lives and reenergize, refresh and renew.  She believes if you can escape a bit and  attend to your physical health and your relationships during your time off, you will become more patient, innovative, accurate and motivated at work.  Personal time feeds your work life, which in turn  feeds your personal life (ie.. helps you to afford those good vacations or lovely dinners with friends). 

I'm trying to find more work life balance.  Somewhere along the way, I learned to put the serious, deep-thinking work aside until the quiet hours at the end of the work day, rather than buckling down and putting systems into place that would allow me focus time during the productive hours of the day.  I need to break my habit of taking a night or two a week to devote to paperwork.  The hard part is breaking the pattern.  I get into a jam and want to buckle down and work a weeknight.  I fight myself, and head out to play instead. 

Jeff and Todd figured out the sucess recipe early in their career and kept to the simple principle: 

        Do your primary work during the primary work hours of the week:  success will follow.