Where are my Collaborative cases?

The biggest complaint I hear from many Collaborative Law practitioners is that they have done the training, joined the organizations, but are having trouble actually getting Collaborative cases.  As Collaborative Law professionals, we are committed to interest-based negotiation, and want our clients to reach durable agreements with as little emotional and financial cost as possible.  But in a world where Collaborative Law is still taking hold, how do we hold to our vision of our practice and still pay the bills?  We do that by getting proactive – taking specific steps to build our Collaborative practices instead of simply waiting for it to happen.

Because I am a divorce attorney, as well as the fact that at this point in time most Collaboration is done in divorce work, I am going to talk about Collaboration from the perspective of a divorce attorney.  I believe the principles would apply to any kind of Collaborative Law practice, but it is easiest for me to talk from my own experiences.

Clients will choose Collaboration

The first principle is that a certain percentage of clients will choose Collaboration over Litigation.  I don’t have statistics on what that percentage is, but looking around at others who have thriving Collaborative Law practices indicates that it is not insignificant.  If a reasonable number of your clients are not choosing Collaboration, then consider how you may be unconsciously influencing their choice.

Collaboration is a good fit

The second principle is that Collaboration IS a good fit for many clients.  I would guess that it would be a good fit for 80% of clients.  There are always a few who want to fight, who want to use the litigation process to beat up on the other party.  But in my experience, the vast majority just want to get through their divorce – they want to get to a settlement, and they would prefer it if they could do so without conflict.

This website

I teach workshops bringing together lessons learned from various sources about marketing and practice growth as it relates to Collaborative Law practice.  On this website we will go through each of the four steps and offer you some exercises along the way to help you formulate a plan to build YOUR Collaborative practice.

I invite anyone who would like to discuss practice building/marketing issues further to call me (206-784-3049) or send me an email.  Because these are issues I care about, I always enjoy discussing them with other professionals, and I learn so much from those discussions.

– Mike Fancher