When people first go to see a divorce lawyer they are probably quite apprehensive, even if they want to be divorced. They are apprehensive because they are putting their future into the hands of another person whom they have never met before.
Traditionally the lawyer has taken a lot of factual information from the client – name, address, date of birth, names and ages of children, the amount of capital and the level of income etc. They then give advice of the likely outcome in court. And that’s fine for some clients but increasingly that is not fine for most.
What clients want first and foremost is to be listened to and to be heard. They want what is important to them to be given some regard, in fact, to be given prominence. They want account taken of who they are as individuals and what help their families need.
So the challenge for lawyers is to start a meeting with a new client with an approach that looks at things from the client’s perspective rather from the lawyer’s pre-determined agenda and anticipated outcomes. This means we must start by finding out who the client really is and what matters to them. The best way to do this is to ask questions and to listen to the answers, if necessary asking further questions to get the whole picture.
- In this situation, what is most important to you?
- If you were to look back on this time how do you want this process of divorce and separation to have been like for you and for your family as a whole?
- If you can look forward to the end of the process what do you want to be able to do with and for yourself and your family when it is over?
- And ask them to answer the same questions from their partner/spouses perspective and from their children’s perspective.
The answers are the client’s aspirations and finding these out at an early stage in the relationship is the difference that can make the difference to how the divorce and separation proceed. Most people want to be fair. Most people want their children to be as unharmed by the experience as possible. Most people want to be dignified and act with integrity. So it is the job of family lawyers to help the client choose a process for resolving differences which has the greatest likelihood of matching their aspirations.
For details of process options see http://www.resolution.org.uk/process/
For more information contact info@flip.co.uk
Tags: children, collaborative divorce, divorce, families, family law, mediation