The use of neutral experts is not the same as embracing the interdisciplinary
collaborative team model. The former is standard operating procedure--in the
sense that most collaborative contracts mandate that any experts retained will
be retained as neutrals within the collaborative umbrella,subject to the same
disqualification provisions as the attorneys. These experts work under the
direction of the collaborative lawyers and serve the legal negotiating process
in one way or another.
The interdisciplinary team is a group of allied professionals who each work
independently with the divorcing couple within a consistent model of
professional collaboration across professional lines. While the result for
lawyers is to greatly enhance the clients' ability to negotiate at the legal
table, and while all the professionals do coordinate their work with one
another, each of the nonlegal professionals does work independently with the
clients on an agenda that is uniquely within that professional's expertise.
The most powerful configuration I'm familiar with is two mental health
coaches, a child development specialist, and a financial specialist. The
latter two do function in a neutral capacity, but as members of a de facto
interdisciplinary team that has learned the additional skills needed to
collaborate as professionals as well as the skills needed to work effectively
with clients. They aren't the same as neutral experts retained by lawyers to
assist the legal process (e.g., business valuation experts).
My own experience has been that two coaches can function in a collaborative
case in quite a different way with clients than a single neutral mental health
person who is working in the same realm of reaching parenting agreements.
The difference is directly analogous to the differences in how a single
mediator works with two clients, as distinct from how two collaborative lawyers
work with clients. There is a kind of support and advocacy built into the
two-person model that many clients value, and an enhanced ability to help each
client deal separately with short term issues relating to the divorce trauma
that are not couples issues any more, but rather individual issues, and that
are not really therapy issues, but more short term and focused. For instance,
in Vancouver, we saw a demonstration by Susan Gamache and Deborah Brakeley that
included teaching the more distraught spouse some specific stress reduction
techniques that could be used immediately at the legal fourway table.
The best trainings in this kind of interdisciplinary team collaboration that
I've experienced are offered by trainers drawn from each of the disciplines,
who have had significant experience working directly with clients in
collaborative interdisciplinary teams. (The soon-to-be-adopted IACP Standards
for interdisciplinary trainings emphasize the importance of trainers having
experience both working with clients and training in a team model.) The
challenges and the learning curve for all professionss are significant (just
think of how much lawyers need to retool in order to learn to collaborate
effectively together and then cube it for the three professions involved) and
it's wise to learn initially from people who have had direct experience with
these challenges. Nancy Cameron and Susan Gamache in Vancouver, Peggy Thompson
and Nancy Ross and Mark Hill in California, and Talia Katz and Vicki Carpel
Miller in Arizona, all have substantial "on the ground" experience in
interdisciplinary collaboration with clients, and train effectively in the
interdisciplinary team collaboration/coaching model.
Pauline H. Tesler
Tesler, Sandmann & Fishman
Telephone: ( 415) 383-5600
Facsimile: (415) 383-5675
Websites:
www.lawtsf.com
www.divorcenet.com/ca/tesler.html
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----- Original Message -----
From: Patricia Plettner
To: CollabLaw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Sunday, November 23, 2003 2:27 PM
Subject: [CollabLaw] Use of Neutral Experts
Re: Use of "Neutral Experts". I live in Dallas and have been a marriage and
family psychotherapist for twenty-nine years, belonged to the American
Society of Trial Consultants since 1996, and have been a mediator since
July. I have received training at Harvard, Pepperdine and Wisconsin, besides
Dallas. Recently, I attended a Collaborative Law Institute in Madison,
Wisconsin and was encouraged to offer my services as a "Divorce Coach" and
"Child Specialist" to collaborative law firms in Dallas. The team concept is
very appealing to me. The collaborative attorneys in the Midwest said that
they used "Neutral Experts" (as Texas Family Code refers to me) about 50% of
the time. I have joined the American Bar Association (Associate Member) and
the Family Law and Dispute Resolutions Sections. I also plan to attend the
Basic Chip Rose training in Fort Worth in January, and Chip Rose's advanced
training in Fort Lauderdale in February. A Wisconsin collaborative attorney
graciously gave me a private ID and password to the website of the
Collaborative Law Institute of Texas, which I am considering joining.
However, I have not heard back from either of the Chip Rose Training
contacts, or from the Houston attorney, whose ID and website I have been
using. Do the Texas-based (especially Dallas area) collaborative attorneys
plan to use neutral experts?
Patricia Plettner
plettner@xxxxxxxxxxx
4216 Lovers Lane
Dallas (University Park) Texas
75225-6920
214-369-3029
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