Ask anyone who has ever gone through a divorce whether they have recommendations for how the process could have gone better and I bet they would have a list of ideas. They would likely identify a need for their legal counsel to have communicated more frequently with them and to have helped more to educate them about their options at each step of the process. They would likely say they worried that their legal counsel had a perverse incentive to provide more services (more hours of billable work) seemingly regardless of the effectiveness of those services because they billed by the hour and the client didn’t see or understand much of the work that the attorney was doing.
Many professions, including law and medicine, are rethinking the most basic aspects of the services they provide and how they provide them and are defining new ways of doing things.
I was reminded of this when reading an article in the New York Times titled When Medicine is Futile, which addressed the issue of whether medical providers are sometimes (or even as a matter of standard office policy) over-treating patients during end-of-life medical care.
The article brought up the issue of whether medical providers—in the name of patient protection and patient care—may actually be working against the patient’s best interests (even affirmatively harming patients) by administering an inappropriately excessive—and futile—list of medical interventions.
The article references a new report by the Institute of Medicine titled Dying in America: Improving Quality and Honoring Individual Preferences Near the End of Life (2014). Some of the recommendations for improved care include increased provider-patient communication, education of medical providers in alternatives such as palliative care, increased patient planning and decision making, and different payment structures that may better align with patient care quality more than just the quantity of the services provided. The gist of the recommendations to improve patient care relate mostly to increased communication, increased education of providers and patients about alternative options, and creating systemic incentives to reward quality patient care over simply providing a high quantity of billable services.
Similar to a hospital emergency room, courtrooms offer intensive and expensive services. In the court system, attorneys rack up immense billable hours based on providing clients with a large quantity of paperwork to submit to the court. In the courtroom, attorney-client communication, client education about their options for resolution and client power to make their own decisions can be lacking.
The legal system, like the medical system, is going through a paradigm shift where legal service providers are rethinking even the most basic aspects of the services they provide and how they provide them and are finding new ways of doing things.
Collaborative Practice providers implement best practices similar to those recommended for the medical profession referenced in the report mentioned above, only in the area of legal representation instead of medical care. In the Collaborative process, there is an increased focus on the quality, rather than just the quantity, of legal services. This change in focus is inherent in the agreement of the clients and attorneys that they will not go to court to resolve their conflict as part of the Collaborative process. In the Collaborative model, clients meet with a team of professionals to share information, learn about alternatives that might not have been considered, and evaluate their options in an open discussion. This provides clients with increased knowledge about their options, increased communication with professionals, and true decision-making authority. Ask anyone who has ever gone through a divorce whether they have recommendations for how the process could have gone better and I bet they would have a list of ideas. They would likely identify a need for their legal counsel to have communicated more frequently with them and to have helped more to educate them about their options at each step of the process. They would likely say they worried that their legal counsel had a perverse incentive to provide more services (more hours of billable work) seemingly regardless of the effectiveness of those services because they billed by the hour and the client didn’t see or understand much of the work that the attorney was doing.
Many professions, including law and medicine, are rethinking the most basic aspects of the services they provide and how they provide them and are defining new ways of doing things.
I was reminded of this when reading an article in the New York Times titled When Medicine is Futile, which addressed the issue of whether medical providers are sometimes (or even as a matter of standard office policy) over-treating patients during end-of-life medical care.
The article brought up the issue of whether medical providers—in the name of patient protection and patient care—may actually be working against the patient’s best interests (even affirmatively harming patients) by administering an inappropriately excessive—and futile—list of medical interventions.
The article references a new report by the Institute of Medicine titled Dying in America: Improving Quality and Honoring Individual Preferences Near the End of Life (2014). Some of the recommendations for improved care include increased provider-patient communication, education of medical providers in alternatives such as palliative care, increased patient planning and decision making, and different payment structures that may better align with patient care quality more than just the quantity of the services provided. The gist of the recommendations to improve patient care relate mostly to increased communication, increased education of providers and patients about alternative options, and creating systemic incentives to reward quality patient care over simply providing a high quantity of billable services.
Similar to a hospital emergency room, courtrooms offer intensive and expensive services. In the court system, attorneys rack up immense billable hours based on providing clients with a large quantity of paperwork to submit to the court. In the courtroom, attorney-client communication, client education about their options for resolution and client power to make their own decisions can be lacking.
The legal system, like the medical system, is going through a paradigm shift where legal service providers are rethinking even the most basic aspects of the services they provide and how they provide them and are finding new ways of doing things.
Collaborative Practice providers implement best practices similar to those recommended for the medical profession referenced in the report mentioned above, only in the area of legal representation instead of medical care. In the Collaborative process, there is an increased focus on the quality, rather than just the quantity, of legal services. This change in focus is inherent in the agreement of the clients and attorneys that they will not go to court to resolve their conflict as part of the Collaborative process. In the Collaborative model, clients meet with a team of professionals to share information, learn about alternatives that might not have been considered, and evaluate their options in an open discussion. This provides clients with increased knowledge about their options, increased communication with professionals, and true decision-making authority. 
Divorce is a crisis in the life of a family. It is not actually a legal crisis, though it requires this expertise to ensure that legal resolutions are reached regarding financial matters. It is not a theoretical crisis. It is a genuine emotional crisis. What does this mean for children?
Some years after I began my therapy practice with children and families decades ago, a researcher named Judith Wallerstein published the results of her longitudinal study on the negative impact of divorce on children. The data were a wake-up call, shocking to some, sobering to all. Mental health experts responded by saying parents and social institutions needed to be more attentive to the impact of divorce on children. A book was written advocating bird nesting—parents rather than children transitioning to and from the homestead—as an alternative “custody” arrangement for families (an option we now know to be a temporary rather than permanent solution). Questions began to be raised on the impact of parenting time arrangements that essentially minimized otherwise healthy and loving relationships between parents and children.
At the time Wallerstein’s study was published, the options available for divorcing parents were largely adversarial in nature. The focus was “rights based,” not based on supporting co-parenting and keeping children out of the middle of the crisis. Many of the parents with whom I work attest to the emotional trauma they experienced when their own parents divorced. In fact, it is likely these divorcing parents were assured by their attorneys that “children are resilient—your kids will be fine.” But we know that children do not become resilient in a vacuum. They need adults to create environments of support and attention to their needs.
Collaborative team divorce offers a clear and powerful alternative for parents who love their children and want to envision a hopeful future for them. Families work with a multidisciplinary team of professionals with specific skills and experience. Mental health expertise is woven throughout the process, both to specifically support children and to provide parents with the best possible grounding for effective co-parenting. If you want to know more about how your family can weather the emotional crisis of divorce with the most dignity and respect for the needs of your children, please learn more about Collaborative team practice at this link to the website for the 
I heard an advertisement on the radio this morning for a litigating divorce attorney. This attorney discussed the importance of removing the emotion from divorce and treating the divorce itself as a business transaction. I understood her point – emotions can be messy or interfere with rational decision making. However, emotion is often the biggest part of divorce. Or, it often feels that way to clients.
How can we ask clients to strip that piece out of the process? Rather, as a collaborative attorney, I believe that emotion can be used to healthily guide clients to mutually agreeable resolutions that have long-term staying power. I embrace the opportunity to take the client where they are at – emotions and all – and guide them towards resolution. Engaging a mental health professional or coach in the process can sometimes be the greatest asset provided to clients and allow them to balance the emotions with the necessary business-like decisions.
Treating a divorce as a business transaction often leads to client’s making decisions for purely financial reasons. Using emotions and feelings of fairness or equity may lead to clients feeling as if the resolutions more completely address their needs.
For example, if one spouse cheated on the other, an emotional response of anger or vindication may lead to the hurt spouse to ask for more financial pay-out. This sort of punitive outcome is not supported in the law and rarely agreed to out-of-court. However, if the parties have a co-parenting relationship or more emotional needs, a purely business-like interaction may never address some of the underlying emotions. Facilitating a discussion about how both parties are feeling and what they may need in order to move forward may been more beneficial to the clients than any financial resolution. Some clients want an apology or a better understanding of why something happened. Others may need to put in effort to establish a shared narrative or story for others.
The finances matter – sometimes most of all. The collaborative process embraces the financial side of divorce, but also allows for a more holistic and complete approach that can address emotions, if the clients so desire.