I hope we remember that one of the most important skills required in Collab is
not
"lawyer" litigation skills but collaborative - working together in harmony
skills
- dealing with conflict skills and the like and perhaps I am uneducated in what
lawyers are trained in because I am a coach, but I suspect from my basic
training
course which included a lawyer, that lawyers typically don't come with these
skills and if they do they get it removed by the end of the first year of law
school. I think there is value in NOT learning something which one has to
unlearn.
So where is the balance between experience in Family Law versus what I'll call
"developing harmony skills?" I don't know. But it does make sense that if Collab
Process takes over from litigation as the major model then lawyers need that
training in law school and would some say that they still need litigation skills
if they don't want to fight?
Gil Shepard
jim musante wrote:
In observing this dialogue, I agree that the emphasis on competence/skills
is for me the most useful criteria. With that said, lets not forget that CP
is only one model of dispute resolution and that litigation is another and
one that is appropriate in some cases in whatever area of civil law.
Therefore, training for and experience in the litigation model is still
important (though maybe not the majority of training and not the first
choice for most disputes!)
Jim Musante
CP coach and trainer
John Crouch6/5/06 10:34 AM
The only worry I have about dispute-resolvers straight out of law school is
that they will be prone to a temptation that all other law students and
lawyers are subject to, as well: pontificating on subjects they know little
about, because circumstances have cast them in a role of knowledge-giver and
opiner.
The most likely solution is for all collaborative practice training to
remind people to be mindful of what they don't know and to build into the
process a time for gathering knowledge and building/supplementing competence
on the clients' specific issues.
-- John Crouch
Arlington, Virginia
703-528-6700
crouch@xxxxxxxxxxx
Yahoo! Groups Links
