TOM, EXCELLENT! I am going to read your email out loud to all the attendees
at our upcoming Interdisciplinary Team Training in Vancouver, Washington
next week!
Smiles,
Donna Smalldon, CDFA, Mediator, Collaborative Practice Northwest Trainer
-----Original Message-----
From: CollabLaw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:CollabLaw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf
Of Tom H. Nagel
Sent: Friday, January 26, 2007 6:57 AM
To: Tom H. Nagel
Cc: collabgroup
Subject: [CollabLaw] Re: Critical Mass
Folks, this is something I wrote for my local collaborative law group a
few years ago. I submit it as this Friday's contribution toward Honey
Hasting's Collaborative Law Cookbook
CRITICAL MASS
Tom H. Nagel
August 2004
Imagine that you and one other lawyer were the only ones in town
practicing collaborative family law. Every new client might be a potential
collaborative law case, but you would face the difficult challenge of
convincing the other spouse (the non-client) to go see the only other
collaborative law attorney in town. The odds are heavily against the
non-client going to see your collaborative colleague You and your colleague
would not get many collaborative law cases.
Now imagine the situation if every other domestic relations lawyer in town
practiced collaborative family law. How many more collaborative law cases
could you expect to have? Wouldn't just about every case that came in the
door be a new collaborative law case? And what would you do during those
long winter nights in Medicine Hat, Alberta? But I digress.
Third example: imagine your and your buddy have the only two computers in
town. You link them up with a phone line. What have you got? An expensive
teletype, and maybe somebody to play Pong with. Link up a few million PC's
though and you have something new: the Internet. How many computers had to
be connected with modems to make the internet bloom?
The point is that we must remember that we are changing the game with
collaborative law.
More collaborative law practitioners does not mean fewer cases for each of
us. More members in the collaborative family law council means MORE
collaborative family law cases for each of us. And more collaborative law
cases will give birth to a new and different kind of family law practice.
We need to reach critical mass. We need more of us in the game. Recruit
all the best family lawyers you know-the folks who can look at a case and
make sense out of it and help their clients toward resolution without
needless bloodshed. The more of us there are, the better job we can do at
getting the word out. The more of us there are, the better chance you have
of seeing the non-client select a collaborative colleague as your opposing
counsel.
I don't know what the magic number is. However, I am convinced that
somewhere between zero and 100% there is a threshold at which collaborative
family law will reach critical mass and take off, so we can all become
"recovering litigators." There is enough work. There are enough cases. There
just are not yet enough members of the collaborative law counsel. Recruit.
We need to reach critical mass.
Tom H. Nagel
Recovering Litigator
Columbus, OH
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Yahoo! Groups Links
