Collaborative Lawyers

Today was groundbreaking - the first meeting of the Collaborative Law Section of the Montgomery County Bar Association.  Some old faces and friends were there, and a lot of new ones.  Again I was struck by the level of energy in a room of people who have dedicated themselves to collaborative practice.  Everyone is so excited about really helping clients help themselves.  If you're reading this and have no idea what I'm talking about, visit the website of International Academy of Collaborative Professionals.
What was truly fascinating about this meeting, and about collaborative meetings in general, is that people who embrace collaborative practice, integrate it into their entire beings.  In the normal practice of law,  lawyers really don't get to know each other.  Sure, we may chit chat to pass the time of day, but for the most part, we really don't actually know much about each other.   Some of us can have multiple cases against each other, and our relationships remain fairly superficial.  Not so with collaborative.  In order to practice collaboratively, the professionals involved have to trust each other, and I mean really trust each other.  The only way to do that is to get to know each other.  At the meeting tonight, there were lawyers from different parts of the county, different areas of practice, different size firms, and different types of practices, all talking and laughing together.  People who have done a lot of cases were giving hints to newly trained lawyers.  It gave me a warm feeling, especially when I looked over the room and realized all of the people there who were my good friends, became so through collaborative practice.
The added bonus of all of this is that most of us who practice collaboratively still have traditional law practices.  The connections we build as collaborators spills over into the traditional practice of law.  The result is that we treat our co-counsel as people we genuinely like, and it works to our clients' advantage.  We communicate better, as we are more apt to interpret what they say as non-adversarial, and care more about having ourselves understood, and about understanding what they're saying.  That makes it easier to reach a settlement because we learn both clients' needs and are committed to working together for a solution - even when the case isn't collaborative.  It's kind of like Lucy, Charlie Brown and the football.  We trust that Lucy won't pull the football away, and in the collaborative world, she doesn't, so we can let go of that anxiety and just concentrate on kicking the football well.  Is that better for our clietnts?  Of course it is.