Tom,
I have had some experience with e-mail negotiations and you touch on one of the
key vulnerabilities that must be observed, namely, the choice of language and
the absence of nuance and expression to flesh out communication. Nonetheless,
there are corresponding advantages over face to face negotiations as well. The
asynchronous nature of dialogue that allows the communicator to speak to the
other parties at the convenience of the person speaking and provides the same
convenience to the responding party while maintaining an ongoing conversation
is profound, to say the least.
Anyone more interested in the use of e-mail and the internet in dispute
resolution should connect with Jim Melamed <jmelamed@xxxxxxxxxxx> and John
Helie <jrhelie@xxxxxxxxxxx>. In addition to running the domain
<http://www.mediate.com/>mediate.com, they regularly present at conferences on
the use of the internet in dispute resolutions. They have accumulated an
enormous amount of material on the subject and are a primary resource.
Chip
At 10:44 AM 1/11/02 -0800, Tom H. Nagel wrote:
My colleague Tim Gerrity and I are just concluding a successful
collaborative family law case. One party lives out of state, so doing
four-way meetings was difficult. We only did one, and got the agreement
signed and the parties committed.
We did one 3 1/2 way meeting, with Tim's client on the speaker phone.
Everything else we did via e-mail. Both attorneys and both clients set
up e-mail group lists, and we would send e-mail messages to all four of us,
as we sorted out some of the remaining asset division and parenting issues.
Having overcome the taboo of never communicating directly with the opposing
counsel's client, we skipped right over the issue of email not being
absolutely confidential. We were not discussing state secrets or putting
account numbers out into cyberspace.
I tried to keep in mind at all times that the informality of email
communication sometimes causes unintended emotional content to be read into
messages. My opposing counsel did the same, I think. In any event, it
worked. I don't know that I would recommend email 4-ways in every case, but
it is at least possible. Has anyone else tried this?
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
CollabLaw-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxx
Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ;
