Why Losing Your Lawyer if Collaboration Fails is the Best Thing for You and Your Kids

The first thing to understand about Collaborative Law is that it is entirely different from every other lawyer assisted Dispute Resolution Process. In any other process, failure to find a satisfactory resolution qualifies you and your lawyer to move forward together to the next, more expensive round.

In a Collaboration, your multidisciplinary team may include lawyers, communication experts, child development consultants, financial experts, and more. It’s a bespoke team, coordinated by the Collaborative Coach, that scales up or down according to the needs of the family. Specifically - what your family needs for collaboration to succeed. 

If a collaboration fails, the team knows we’ll be sending you back into adversarial litigation. In that arena, it becomes incredibly difficult to protect your children from the crossfire, and it makes it so much harder to build the healthy, cooperative co-parenting relationship you actually want. The timelines are longer, the costs are higher, and the outcomes are worse. No one on your collaborative team wants that outcome for you and your family.

Before you outlay a single cent on any of the professionals in your process, we start by creating your safety net. As your Collaborative Coach, I spend time with each of you individually to understand what you both want and need. 

I’m looking to see:

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

Our next step is a detailed planning session. Together, we review the Participation Agreement and Ground Rules, ensuring everyone understands the depth, scope, and limitations of the process, including absolute clarity about each team member’s role.  

If, after this meeting, we all agree that Collaboration is the right path forward, I will provide a transparent cost estimate and begin to assemble your team. 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?”

As each member signs the Participation Agreement, they make an ironclad commitment that they will work together to bring the matter to a successful resolution. This all-in commitment removes the threat of litigation as a negotiation tactic, ensuring that all participants are financially and professionally motivated to reach an agreement. 

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 gets together. We strategically plan how we support you, resource you, and continue to move things through to a solution that works. 

To be perfectly blunt, unlike litigation, where a lawyer may benefit financially if the matter escalates to a lucrative court battle, collaborative lawyers are financially disincentivised from failure. 

If a Collaboration is at risk, it means your team works harder to save it. We’re in it for the long haul, and we will do everything in our power to see you through to the other side.

When you’re considering the risk of losing your lawyer, it’s worth knowing what the size of the risk actually is. 

Here are some statistics that might help you with your decision making:

Quite frankly, I like those odds.

And 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.