I was a skeptic. How could a lawyer agree to give up a major tool in her toolbox? What possible advantage might there be in agreeing not to go to court?
At the outset of a case, Collaborative Law did not make a lot of sense to me. Why “lawyer up” if you intend to go to battle without your sword? After holding fast to that perspective for many years, I decided I needed to learn more. I reasoned that by going through the Collaborative Law training, it would affirm my view that Collaborative Law was an unrealistic path to help clients reach successful outcomes. However as is often times the case, something interesting happened. I started to see that alternative, non-litigation based resolutions were possible, and that by agreeing not to go to Court until they’d reached an Agreement, lawyers could actually work hard applying their legal knowledge to craft creative solutions with and for their clients. Although Collaborative Law isn’t always a viable path, when it is appropriate it can prove to be productive, and even healing.
As the Chinese philosopher Lao-Tse said, “What is soft is strong. Water is fluid, soft and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard.”