It is all about reaching people and educating them about what is possible.
The community has to support collaborative law so that when their daughters,
sons, sisters, brothers approach a collaborative divorce, their family
members will understand and encourage it. Our task is to re-educate the
world about what is possible in the legal system. There are already many
marketing campaigns for the adversarial system: movies, television, past
experience, jokes, etc. all point to a nasty adversarial system. Here are
some ideas based on my experience and observations:
My local paper loved having me and a colleague write a regular column on
legal matters. We regularly commented on collaborative ways of resolving
disputes while also answering questions from readers (or questions we made
up).
Many communities have had news coverage of their programs. Collaborative
Law is newsworthy! Also, making sure members of the press know you are there
is important. If a related topic comes up in the news, they may want to
hear your comment. I was known for my work in domestic violence and I
actually got tired of having the press call me to comment about every dv
case that came along. Then they added me to stories about child support and
even legal issues I knew nothing about.
Speak to community groups about this new approach to divorce. Most
newspapers have calendars of group activities and libraries have contact
information for groups. As someone who has been responsible for booking
event speakers, I can tell you I welcome hearing from potential speakers,
all the more if they have something new and interesting to talk about. You
could start a speakers bureau and rotate this task.
Are there local periodicals like parenting magazines? Write articles for
them. Again, they are often eager to get material. (Our local health food
store has dozens of free interesting periodicals that I never knew about
until I was hanging out there today.)
Who are key members of your community who influence the decisions of others?
For example, elders of minority ethnic communities often advise their
members. When I shifted my law practice away from adversarial work, I
notified all the ministers and counselors in the community. They loved it
and I actually ended up representing some of their family members, in
addition to members of the congregations/clientele. I considered starting a
regular, short newsletter to that group of folks and I still think that
might have been a good idea, even better if your collab law group shares the
job.
These are some ideas. I think the most important thing is to take the
perspective that you are transforming the whole community and from that,
clients will come.
----- Original Message -----
From: "essarae" <essa19@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <CollabLaw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, January 05, 2002 9:21 AM
Subject: [CollabLaw] Tips on promoting/marketing Collaborative Law
Hello everyone,
This is my first posting to this board.
I am part of the Association for Collaborative Family Lawyers in
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Our association is less than a year old
and we have approximately 35 members. There is a lot of excitement
amongst the family lawyers who are members and who have completed 16
hours of Collaborative Family Law training, 32 hours of interest
based negotiation training and 40 hours of mediation training (the
standard that has been set province-wide to allow members to use the
title "Registered Collaborative Family Lawyer").
The difficulty that we are seeing however, is that the members have
invested much time, energy and resources into their training and are
not yet finding the monetary pay off. ie. not enough/any
collaborative family law clients.
Our association has monthly meetings scheduled. To assist those
members who may be losing their enthusiasm due to lack of work, I
have volunteered to present, at our February meeting, the topic: "50
ways to market/promote Collaborative Family Law and Your
Collaborative Family Law Practice".
Here then is the appeal: Would everyone (anyone???) please take a
moment and send me their best or any tips for getting Collaborative
Family Law files and/or promoting Collaborative Law in general. This
will help our membership immensely and I would be glad to compile the
paper and arrange for wider distribution to anyone else who would
liek to have it.
Responses could be posted on this board or can be sent to me
personally at marla.miller@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Or, for further
contact information, you can check my website at www.millerboileau.com
Thank you for what I hope will be your overwhelming support.
Marla Miller
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