Advanced Collaborative Family Law
*Approved for 18 hours of CFLS (Certified Family Law Specialist) credit -
includes one hour of credit for Family Law Ethics.
Faculty: Pauline Tesler and David Fink
Intended for experienced collaborative divorce lawyers, this intensive seminar and workshop focuses on building a richer understanding of the potential offered by collaborative family law for facilitating deep and lasting resolution of divorce-related issues. Through lectures, discussion, exercises, demonstrations, and structured role playing, the course aims to strengthen practitioners' conceptual mastery of collaborative practice and to enhance the skills with which practitioners do the work. Participants should expect to engage in self-reflective exercises aimed at identifying personal growth points, as well as more objective exercises aimed at practicing and enhancing the skills needed for high quality collaborative lawyering. Participants will be asked to bring challenging problems from their own collaborative cases, which will provide additional material for discussion and spontaneous role plays.
The trainers are both leaders in the rapidly growing collaborative divorce movement which is sweeping the field of family law. Both are longtimefamily law specialists, certified by the State Bar of California Board of Legal Specialization, and both are Fellows of the select American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. Both have been named repeatedly as California "Superlawyers." Both bring a practical and direct approach toteaching, grounded in decades of family law appropriate dispute resolution with clients, including mediation as well as collaborative law. Their style is spontaneous, interactive, challenging, and lively.
What you will learn:
- How to fulfill ethical responsibilities and still express conviction about the strengths offered by collaborative law, during the "informed consent" process choice phase of a collaborative case
- How to identify potentially difficult clients, including those who may not be appropriate candidates for collaborative divorce, and what to do about it
- How to educate clients about the law in collaborative divorce practice: making the law a tool rather than a problem in client centered negotiations
- The narrative in collaborative divorce practice: what story will guide the case, and when and how will it be heardWhat collaborative lawyers need to know from the fields of cognitive psychology, human needs theory, and other social and natural sciences in order to do the best possible work with divorcing clients
- How to use collaborative process and structure as conflict management tools
- Techniques for enhancing interest based bargaining at the table
- How to improve your communication skills with your client, with your colleagues, and in negotiations
- What the interdisciplinary collaborative practice team model offers to clients that collaborative lawyers alone cannot
Pauline Tesler is a leading pioneer in the international collaborative law movement. She cofounded the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals and was its first president. She is also cofounder and first coeditor of The Collaborative Review. Her extensive writings include Collaborative Law: Achieving Effective Resolution in Divorce Without Litigation (2001) and Collaborative Divorce: The Revolutionary New Way to Restructure Your Family, Resolve Legal Issues, and Move On With Your Life (2006). Recipient of the first ABA Lawyer as Problem Solver award in 2002, Tesler has trained thousands of lawyers and other professionals in effective collaborative practice, in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.
David Fink cofounded Collaborative Practice San Francisco and Collaborative Practice California, one of the world's largest collaborative organizations. Former chair of the Family Law Sections of the California State Bar and the San Francisco Bar Association, Fink is the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers Northern California chapter president for 2008. His legislative advocacy helped pass the California Collaborative Law Statute, one of three in the nation. An experienced mediator and collaborative lawyer, he who was named one of the Top 10 Lawyers in California in 2006, and brings skills from both roles into his work as a trainer of collaborative lawyers.