Why is it so important to sign on formally to the official Collaborative Law Agreement? Why can’t you work collaboratively with the other lawyer but still go to court if the process doesn’t work?
The special power that Collaborative Law has to spark creative conflict resolution seems to happen only when the lawyers and the clients are all pulling together in the same direction, to solve the same problems in the same way. If the lawyers can still consider unilateral resort to the courts as a fallback option, their thought processes do not become transformed; their creativity is actually crippled by the availability of court and conventional trials. Only when everyone knows that it is up to the four of them and only the four of them to think their way to a solution, or else the process fails and the lawyers are out of the picture, does the special “hypercreativity” of collaborative law get triggered. The moment when each person realizes that solving both clients’ problems is the responsibility of all four participants is the moment when the magic can happen.
Collaborative law is not just two lawyers who like each other, or who agree to “behave nicely.” It is a special technique that demands special talents and procedures in order to work as promised. Any effort by parties and their lawyers to resolve disputes cooperatively and outside court is to be encouraged, but only collaborative law is collaborative law.
How does the cost of collaborative law compare with the cost of litigation?
Litigation is, quite simply, the most expensive way of resolving a dispute. By way of illustration, it is common for litigated divorces to begin with a motion for temporary support. The result is exactly that—a temporary order, not any final resolution of any issues. It is not uncommon for a single temporary support motion to cost as much or more in lawyers’ fees and costs as it costs for an entire collaborative law representation. A rule of thumb is that collaborative law representation will cost from one tenth to one twentieth as much as being represented conventionally by a lawyer who takes your case to court.
Excerpted from Handbook for Clients: An orientation to …dispute-resolution options available to clients © 2001 American Bar Association |
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