What is collaborative practice?
Collaborative Practice involves:
- A focus on the future;
- In Family Law matters, promoting the best interests of the children;
- Preserving and building mutual respect;
- An open and transparent exchange of information;
- An interest based approach to negotiation.
Collaborative Practice is an ideal approach for parties involved in a dispute who wish to or expect to have some form of ongoing relationship, hence its relevance in the Family Law area. The approach can equally be used in other areas however, such as landlord and tenant, building disputes, testators' family maintenance claims, workplace disputes and the like.
Key Elements:
The key features of the collaborative approach are:
- Principled negotiation - both parties agree upfront on how the process and negotiations will be conducted;
- Committed to success - both parties and their lawyers sign a contract setting out the ground rules for the collaborative process and agreeing not to go to Court even if the negotiations become difficult;
- No Court - both parties agree with their lawyers to resolve issues without going to Court;
- A win-win approach - Settlement is reached in 4-way, face to face meetings, 2 solicitors, 2 clients aiming to facilitate the best outcome for both parties;
- Transparency - All negotiations are conducted in the presence of the clients. Lawyers do not negotiate on behalf of clients outside the meetings;
- Full Disclosure - Both parties undertake to be honest and open especially in relation to financial and other issues;
- Empowering - The parties, not the Courts or the lawyers determine the pace of the process;
- Future Focus - The collaborative process is about moving forward and not attributing blame;
- Flexible - Additional experts such as valuers, financial advisers, accountants, psychologists and the like can be brought in to assist the parties during the course of negotiations;
- Efficient - because Court processes are not involved a collaborative negotiation generally requires less time and often involves less expense to reach settlement;
- Proven results - the advantages of using this method to resolve disputes have been tested over 20 years of practice in the USA and Canada and more recently in the UK.
© 2006 AIFLAM. All rights reserved.
