You Can’t Keep Your Lawyer if Collaboration Doesn’t Work - Here’s Why

In any other family law process, failure to find a satisfactory resolution “qualifies” you and your lawyer to move forward together to the next, more expensive round. 

You chose your lawyer carefully. You’re confident they're deeply ethical and want to support you to a fair, efficient outcome. Yet you’re both somewhat at the mercy of the opposing counsel, and the luck-of-the-draw assigned judicial officer. 

Collaboration isn’t “one more level” in the conflict escalation game. It’s a complete alternative outside of the litigation machine. 

In a Collaboration, you and your co-parent are supported by a bespoke multidisciplinary team that scales up or down according to the needs of your family. Your team may include lawyers, communication experts, child development consultants, financial experts, and sometimes more. 

The team is bound together by a Participation Agreement, which sets out the roles and responsibilities of the team. 

A key commitment made in this agreement by every team member is that they'll work together to find solutions that are acceptable to the family - and that if collaboration fails and the participants choose an adversarial process, none of the professionals will continue to work for either of the participants. 

Each Collaborative Professional has witnessed the trauma inflicted on families caught in litigation, and we know how much harder it makes it for you to continue with cooperative, low-conflict co-parenting in the aftermath. 

We want to see you reach an agreement that feels good in your nervous system. Where you're confident that you’ve come to the best arrangements possible for you and the kids. And we need you to know that we're all-in for making this work.

Our commitment that we won’t come with you to the courtroom is your insurance policy that no professional on the team is professionally or financially incentivised by collaboration failure. When it’s Collaboration-or-bust, none of your team are going to give up on you if the going gets tough. That’s when we work our hardest!

It’s one thing to trust your team - but we totally get that it’s another thing to trust your co-parent. Especially if there’s been a lot of anger, hurt or betrayal on either side.

That’s why we're careful as we step you through the intake process. By the time you arrive at your first full team Collaboration Meeting, every member of the team has assessed you for suitability and likelihood of success. After all, there’s no job satisfaction for us if we take you into a process that cannot succeed. 

I’m looking to see:

If we can’t see a way for collaboration to be successful for your family, we make alternative recommendations for dispute resolution pathways that will be safer and more suitable for your situation. 

If you have already engaged collaborative lawyers, they stay with you. For those who are not yet represented, I handpick the best professionals for the unique needs of your family.  Not just “Who is right for you,” but “Who is right for the team dynamic to make sure this is a success?”

This doesn’t mean there won’t be rough spots and bumps along the road. But when those happen, rather than your lawyer reassuring you that you’ll have better luck in the next round, or blaming your co-parent or their lawyer for the failure, your entire team strategically plans how we support you, resource you, and continue to move things through to a solution that works.

The question you might still be wondering, though, is with all these good intentions of the team, does it actually bring in results? If you’re risking losing an awesome lawyer, it’s fair that you’d want to know the size of the risk you’re taking. 

The litigation process that Collaboration is most similar to is Mediation. If you’ve found a great lawyer, and you’re trying to decide whether to proceed with them to Mediation or Collaboration, here’s a couple of helpful data points:

In Australia, only 65% of participants reach a full or partial agreement during traditional mediation.

In contrast, 86% of collaborations end in a full agreement. 

Closer to home, every collaboration I have taken through to the first meeting has ended in a successful, signed agreement. I’m not going to lie; there’s a huge amount of satisfaction with that statistic. It’s everything I care to be about. 

Being afraid of losing your collaborative lawyer is the wrong reason to avoid collaboration. It’s where your lawyer will do their very best work, to achieve the very best outcomes for you and your family.

If you’re making your way through the murky waters of separation and wanting to lay a foundation that protects your kids, your sanity and your back pocket, we’re here for you. Book a free discovery call with me today. We can sit down together, look at your unique family situation, and explore whether the collaborative pathway is the right path for writing your next chapter. After all, you were never meant to do this alone.

*Name changed to protect privacy.