COLLABORATIVE PRACTICE 

Family lawyers are now engaged in a new method of resolving marital disputes called ‘collaborative practise’, which facilitates communication between you and your partner by the use of various skills. 

This process will empower you to participate actively in bringing about your own resolution. Uniquely, it gives children a voice within the process and brings together into one team a range of specialists who work with families in crisis, thus offering you the best available expertise in one creative resolution orientated structure. The team all working together will actively work to find resolutions tailored to suit your family. All team members are collaboratively trained.

You will each come to the table with your own collaborative lawyer, who is there to advise and guide you through the process and will give you legal advice as and when required. Many people find this comforting and feel better empowered as a result. The lawyers manage the process.

The team is structured to your families’ particular needs. There is little or no correspondence, making the process transparent and cost effective. There are no hidden costs. You will be aware of all work going on in your case. Since everyone works in a team pulling together, then only one expert is required, as opposed to a more complex court situation where there can be two valuers and two financial specialists dealing with the one case etc.

Collaborative practise offers a one stop service to families in crisis; the opportunity is there to get financial advice, legal advice, mediation skill, assistance with child issues, and assistance with communication and emotional management all within the service offered. The team can be expanded or contracted to meet any needs of the family and there is no need to outsource any assistance or to take any advice elsewhere.

All drafting can also be done within the collaborative process and any agreements can be ruled or made an order of the court as required. Not all lawyers are collaboratively trained and you should check carefully before seeing a family specialist that he or she is in a position to offer you a full range of options, so that you can be fully informed and choose the option best suited to you and your family’s needs.

The website of the Association of Collaborative Practitioners, www.acp.ie, will give you a list of qualified lawyers in your area. Many collaborative lawyers are also trained mediators and they bring those additional skills to their practise. Our principal solcitor, Anne O’Neill, is a trained collaborative lawyer and a certified mediator.

See also the website for the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals, www.collaborativepractice.com.

Collaborative Coaches
Jemima Brookman – Collaborative Coach
Vivienne Chlodnicki – Collaborative Coach
Lois Ann Comardo – Collaborative Coach

Financial Expert
Donal O’Boyle – Finacial Expert   (021)4832422

Collaborative Practitioners
Helen M Collins
Patricia A. Mallon

Terms in Collaborative Practise

Collaborative lawyers will go out of their way to use language in a user friendly way but more than that collaborative lawyers understand the importance of words to determine the way people look at themselves and issues. Therefore they do not use the language of opposition to describe the collaborative process and they tend to avoid words which suggest failure or breakdown on the part of the couple. Below are a number of terms used in Collaborative Practise.

COLLABORATIVE PRACTICE 

Family lawyers are now engaged in a new method of resolving marital disputes called ‘collaborative practise’, which facilitates communication between you and your partner by the use of various skills. 

This process will empower you to participate actively in bringing about your own resolution. Uniquely, it gives children a voice within the process and brings together into one team a range of specialists who work with families in crisis, thus offering you the best available expertise in one creative resolution orientated structure. The team all working together will actively work to find resolutions tailored to suit your family. All team members are collaboratively trained.

You will each come to the table with your own collaborative lawyer, who is there to advise and guide you through the process and will give you legal advice as and when required. Many people find this comforting and feel better empowered as a result. The lawyers manage the process.

The team is structured to your families’ particular needs. There is little or no correspondence, making the process transparent and cost effective. There are no hidden costs. You will be aware of all work going on in your case. Since everyone works in a team pulling together, then only one expert is required, as opposed to a more complex court situation where there can be two valuers and two financial specialists dealing with the one case etc.

Collaborative practise offers a one stop service to families in crisis; the opportunity is there to get financial advice, legal advice, mediation skill, assistance with child issues, and assistance with communication and emotional management all within the service offered. The team can be expanded or contracted to meet any needs of the family and there is no need to outsource any assistance or to take any advice elsewhere.

All drafting can also be done within the collaborative process and any agreements can be ruled or made an order of the court as required. Not all lawyers are collaboratively trained and you should check carefully before seeing a family specialist that he or she is in a position to offer you a full range of options, so that you can be fully informed and choose the option best suited to you and your family’s needs. 

The website of the Association of Collaborative Practitioners, www.acp.ie, will give you a list of qualified lawyers in your area. Many collaborative lawyers are also trained mediators and they bring those additional skills to their practise. Our principal solcitor, Anne O’Neill, is a trained collaborative lawyer and a certified mediator.

See also the website for the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals, www.collaborativepractice.com.

Collaborative Coaches
Jemima Brookman – Collaborative Coach
Vivienne Chlodnicki – Collaborative Coach
Lois Ann Comardo – Collaborative Coach

Financial Expert
Donal O’Boyle – Finacial Expert   (021)4832422

Collaborative Practitioners
Helen M Collins
Patricia A. Mallon

Terms in Collaborative Practise

Collaborative lawyers will go out of their way to use language in a user friendly way but more than that collaborative lawyers understand the importance of words to determine the way people look at themselves and issues. Therefore they do not use the language of opposition to describe the collaborative process and they tend to avoid words which suggest failure or breakdown on the part of the couple. Below are a number of terms used in Collaborative Practise.

Participation
Participation Agreement is the fundamental contract in a collaborative case which all parties sign. It sets out the rules of collaboration. Most importantly it contains a provision that should the process fail and the parties decide to go to court, then the lawyers must relinquish the case and other lawyers must be sought by the parties. This is called the ‘buy in’ and ensures that the lawyers will do everything within their power to try and make the collaborative case succeed.
Six-Way Meetings, Four-Way Meetings and Two-Way Meetings
This describes the various kinds of meetings that take place within the collaborative process in the attempt to reach resolutions on all family issues. Collaborative lawyers do not engage in correspondence to any great degree and all business within the process is conducted by way of face to face meetings where at all possible and these are described in the manner above so as to distinguish them for the practitioners. Minutes are kept of all meetings within the process. Sometimes because the two collaborative lawyers working on a case do not reside in the same town, a certain amount of correspondence may be unavoidable but this should never be about issues in the case and should be confined to arrangements for meetings and such like matters.
Collaborative Coaches
Collaborative Coaches are unique to Collaborative Practise. The coaches come from a therapeutic background. They must be collaboratively trained in the same way as the lawyers to work in the process. They work in the process to manage the emotions of the parties who are collaborating and also as communication specialists i.e. they assist the parties with their communication both within the process and hopefully into the future making co-parenting a real possibility post separation.

Their involvement with the parties is only within the process and they do not work with you outside the process. The coach is not a neutral ; they are aligned to a particular client as are the lawyers.

Child Specialist
This is a term used to describe the child expert involved in the collaborative process. The child specialist’s job is to bring the voice of the child into the process and this is unique to collaborative law. The Child Specialist must be collaboratively trained. The child’s voice is brought into the process in a non-judgemental resolution orientated way. The parties are enabled to hear their children by the assistance of the coaches who are with them when the child specialist meets with them. The child specialist is a neutral in the process which means that they are not aligned to any particular client. Their responsibility is to the children and the process.
Financial Specialist
The Financial Specialist is generally an accountant with an interest in working in family law. The Financial Specialist must be collaboratively trained in common with the other specialists in the process. The job of the Financial Specialist is limited to the process and he or she does not act for the parties outside of the process. Their role within the process is somewhat more extensive than the role generally assigned to an accountant in adversarial family law proceedings. The Financial Specialist is a neutral and his or her responsibility is to the family and the process.