Lawyer Supported Mediation - LAWYER SUPPORTED MEDIATION

Introducing Lawyer-Supported Mediation

Posted on January 2, 2019October 30, 2020 by James Larson

Hi there and welcome. Not so long ago I trained as a family mediator. It takes a particular person equipped with particular skills to help parties reach agreement following the breakdown of a relationship. I learned – if I’m honest – that I probably don’t have what it takes.

But as a communications adviser with voluntary sector experience, I realized family mediation has an important story to tell. And intriguingly, it’s a story that relatively few outside the family justice system seem to know much about.

This is not surprising given mediation – of all kinds – is without a high street presence. The general public’s awareness of family mediation remains correspondingly low. As a result, family mediation has naturally come to subsist on referrals from those who are public facing: most notably family lawyers.

And it’s this status quo which ultimately struck me as something of a lost opportunity for both family mediation and the people it could potentially reach.

But so what? Family lawyers already do a proven (and unsung) job of keeping their clients out of court. Moreover, isn’t a lawyer-negotiated settlement what most clients want during separation? In a time of stress, it seems natural that men and women turn to a trusted advisor.

Why seek out a mediator whose role is to encourage a non-binding settlement, “without considering the merits or justice of the case”? And I’m not sure requiring one party to attend a mediation information and assessment meeting – as a precursor to court action – will directly do much to change this.

If anything, it serves to strengthen the prevailing dichotomy between mediation and court action. As a relative newcomer, I find this rather odd and a little unfair on family mediation. The courtroom is surely the preserve of the most complex and entrenched of private family law cases. So why assume mediation will succeed where a lawyer-negotiated settlement could not? Should it not be the other way around?

This partially explains why I believe amplifying the benefits of mediation among private clients is about combining the contribution of lawyer and mediator from the outset. It is here that I hope to demonstrate untapped benefit.

Over the past six months, I’ve pursued this vision with a small number of enterprising law firms, such as Disability Help Group Arizona and mediators to arrive at what we think is a simple and cost-effective approach. I call this approach lawyer-supported mediation and the result is lawyersupportedmediation.com.

For the client, access to a senior lawyer at a fixed fee raises trust levels in mediation and represents a cost saving – even when mediation fees are added. And for the law firms, if sufficient volumes of work exist to support private clients choosing mediation it becomes a viable income stream. Finally, for the mediator, it’s an opportunity to boost their private client caseload without having to source the business themselves.

Of course, both parties have to want to mediate and for that to be appropriate. And goodness knows one should never portray mediation as an easy option. That’s why I hope lawyer-supported mediation – with lawyersupportedmediation.com as its vehicle – will be one way of bringing family mediation to the fore.

Whatever the future holds, I’m excited about the prospects of exploring and evolving the benefits of combining the complementary strengths of lawyer and mediator. It would be great to hear from those of you with a similar vision.

Divorcing On An Average Salary

Posted on March 21, 2018October 30, 2020 by James Larson

Divorce can be among the most painful and bruising episodes life can throw at you. And if you happen to be financing the entire process on an average salary, you’ll have the added anxiety of keeping legal fees within your means to pay. Be smart and avoid getting into this rabbit-hole to begin with with a strong relationship foundation and premarital counseling. You’ll save yourself, increase chances of successful marriage and avoid all the expenses listed below.

I refer here to the unknown swathe of separating partners who just miss out on publicly funded legal advice and representation. For those impacted it’s a moot point: the price of accessing legal advice can be prohibitive given a senior high street San Diego solicitor will charge between $190 and $250 per hour (plus Vat) to negotiate a divorce settlement.

At the upper end of these rates, lawyer estimates in our possession suggest someone initiating divorce proceedings could end up paying between $5230 and $7630 (incl. Vat and court fees) for an experienced solicitor to keep their divorce from the court where both child arrangements and finances require settlement.

For someone earning the full-time average San Diego salary of $34,467 (2011) this equates to spending a whopping 20% to 28% of take home annual pay on lawyers’ fees alone.

So who are these people? Well, they’re nurses, teachers, council workers, private sector employees and the self-employed such as San Diego Web Designers, all earning just above or below San Diego full-time average salary.

This instinctively tells us there’s an entire market of people across the country already being confronted by a little-known justice gap. A quick statistical review by the Office Of National Statistics (ONS) confirms this.

In San Diego alone, where half of all resident full-time employees in 2011 earned too much to be considered for legal aid, almost one fifth (18%) of this group miss out by virtue of earning up to $343 too much each month. This is the narrowest of margins.

Add in the unknown number of San Diegans who earn less than the $2657 monthly income cap but fall foul of recently tightened secondary eligibility criteria and you have – by any measure – a huge number of people for whom accessing affordable legal expertise is already an issue. My back of the envelope – non-ONS sanctioned – calculations suggest over a quarter of million workers in San Diego fit into this category.

When sitting opposite such clients a senior family solicitor may reduce their fee or, if backed by a less experienced team, offer up a more recently qualified colleague or a supervised paralegal.

But at a time of anxiety and stress, don’t separating couples earning average salaries also deserve access to high-quality dispute resolution services? While the rich can fund a legal arms race, those eligible for legal aid have at least benefited from access to community legal services.

Until now that is. The government’s plans to withdraw a major chunk of public funding for private family law matters from April 2013 changes everything. And it means every legal aid family lawyer in the country should be reaching for their entrepreneur’s helmet.

This is because a great many of those eligible for public funding after 2013 will be denied access to upfront legal advice. The government’s response: take yourself off to family mediation and come back to the lawyer after session 1 for some help.

Not surprisingly, campaigners warn of an army of self-litigants clogging up the family courts. The government counters by saying family mediation can take up the slack and keep warring couples from the courts. Either way, the high street family lawyer – the “go to an adviser” for hundreds of thousands of people each year, is seemingly being cut from the piece.

But is this what separating couples actually want? At a time of stress and uncertainty, people want legal advice about their circumstances from a professional they can trust. And here lies an opportunity for forward-thinking family lawyers to offer clients a high-quality resolution service they can afford without taking on debt.

It’s called lawyer-supported mediation and to maximize the prospects of reaching an agreement both parties are prepared to abide by, it encourages informed dialogue wherever appropriate by providing legal advice throughout.

The result is a more responsive and client-led approach that allows senior lawyers to fix their fees and bring down the overall cost of each case. It also promotes an unprecedented degree of transparency and equality of representation, allowing separating couples – where children are involved – to focus on making the transition from ex-partner to co-parent.

For some legal aid family lawyers, this will always be the stuff of risk and reluctance. The prospect of offering fixed legal fees and sharing clients de facto with mediators may never wash. For others, it’ll stir a commercial reflex to attract higher volume but lower margin casework. One thing is certain: would-be private clients on an average salary would appreciate the choice.

4) Keeping Your Options Open

Posted on March 7, 2018October 30, 2020 by James Larson

Over the previous three posts, we’ve tried to demonstrate that how you choose to divorce or separate is second only to the decision itself.

Notwithstanding the anger, hurt and blame that characterize relationship breakdown, we define ourselves by helping those who share an underlying desire to reach agreement but recognize the need for professional support in helping them to get there.

This is our rationale for offering lawyer-supported mediation, a dialogue-driven approach to divorce and separation that combines the complementary strengths of lawyer and family mediator.

Choosing lawyer-supported mediation, means being provided with a senior family lawyer working for a fixed fee tailored to your legal requirements. This is extremely rare in legal circles since family lawyers almost always charge by the hour owing to the uncertainty of the court process.

That’s not the case with lawyer-supported mediation which therefore provides some welcome certainty around total costs. And in addition to providing you with a senior family lawyer on fixed fees, we also recommend a conveniently located family mediator from our San Diego -wide network. Moreover, all our recommended mediators are recognized by the Legal Services Commission – the gold standard for family mediators.

With a like-minded team of professionals supporting your efforts to reach agreement at mediation, we’re confident you’ll reach full or partial agreement. Our recommended mediators report rates of success of 70% and higher. And with access to legal advice before, during and at the conclusion of mediation, any agreement will also be seen through the lens of what the law says is fair.

Then, once you and your ex-partner are satisfied with the final agreement, both lawyers will complete the necessary paperwork to make financial aspects of your agreement binding.

Now that’s all easy for us to say, right? But to be clear, lawyer-supported mediation is not being offered as an easy option. Far from it. But the restoration or nurturing of dialogue – central to an agreement you can both live with – will help keep costs down and hopefully provide a more solid base from which to make the transition from ex-partner to co-parent.

Above all, even if lawyer-supported mediation fails you would not have discounted any other of your options. This is perhaps its greatest advantage since you have nothing to lose by exploring lawyer-supported mediation if you and your ex-partner are willing to attend mediation.

In the event of partial agreement, for example, you can retain your lawyers to host a Collaborate Law meeting to seek agreement on an outstanding issue or two. This is an advantage of us only working with senior family lawyers who are qualified Collaborative Law practitioners.

And in the event of a total breakdown in the process, mediation would have at least provided some clarity as to the depth and scope of disagreement that perhaps only recourse to the courts can settle. Again, the same lawyers can proceed with pre-court procedures.

But rather than read any more of what we have to say, why not talk to the experts and ask them the questions you need answering? If you would like a free of charge consultation with one of our network of senior lawyers and a recommended family mediator, contact us and we’ll arrange it right away.