Suchergebnisse

Unbundling, also known as limited‐scope representation, has been adopted by judges, the organized legal profession, and divorcing parties. Unbundling is a legal access approach to better and more affordably serve unrepresented divorce litigants as well as to assist overburdened and underfunded courts. This article will focus on another critical benefit of unbundling: the ability of divorcing professionals to provide information and support to divorcing families to help reduce family conflicts. This article shall discuss four unbundled peacemaking roles that lawyers can play: (1) Collaborative Lawyer; (2) Lawyer Coach for Self‐Represented Litigants; (3) Lawyer for Mediation Participants; and (4) Preventive Legal Health Care Provider.

Key Points for the Family Court Community:
Overview of limited‐scope lawyering roles
Impact of unbundled representation on peacemaking
Best practices of noncourt lawyering

Family lawyers are major beneficiaries of the reforms set out in the Family Law Education Reform Project (FLER) Report. This commentary from a veteran family law practitioner explores the needs of the family law bar for the training of law students in practical, interdisciplinary, client‐centered lawyering that goes beyond the traditional case method. I trace many of the current innovations evolving in family law practice and how FLER reforms will not only benefit law schools but also have a major impact in the courts and private practice sector.

The family law system needs fixing. The real question is how to go about fixing it. The concept of mediation and its process should be vital in the rethinking and restructuring of the system. This article discusses how mediation can be used in policy‐making to get all the stakeholders in the family law system to creatively and non‐judgmentally work toward reform. The author contends that increased legal access and speedy low‐cost dispute resolution should be at the top of the reform agenda. Courts and professional offices are valued for their consumer‐friendliness, stressing nonadversarial settings and cleint education. Unbundling is urged to be not only accepted but also promoted as a practice to meet the legal needs of families. The article concludes with the argument that effective reform should incorporate the principles of mediation, and the reform process should take advantage of models of consumer friendliness from both the public and private sectors.

The author examines the problem of representing adverse interests of the parties in family law disputes and proposes some measures for attorneys to address this need. The role of the attorney shifts from being merely an advocate to becoming a consultant and adopting other roles, depending on the needs and wishes of the client. According to this article, the bar must become more sensitive to the needs of the public and the call for a simpler, more "user‐friendly" system.

This article describes the use of a very focused, concentrated, one day child custody evaluation process. This process is structured and interactive. The author has used this method in resolving several custody disputes and contends that this method yields accurate, meaningful results with minimum disruption and cost to the parties.

For attorneys who engage in matrimonial practice, work is often performed by a sole practitioner. While members of other professions have already demonstrated that interdisciplinary practice and teamwork are integral to efficiency, client satisfaction, and career success, matrimonial attorneys are just beginning to work in deliberately constructed interdisciplinary teams. In this article, we examine the definition of teamwork and highlight the characteristics of an effective team, drawing examples from the business, medical, and mental health fields. We then determine how successful teams are built and explore the application of such approaches within matrimonial practice, offering recommendations for research and effective use of teams to help families that are facing conflict and reorganization.

Parties often find themselves in court after the escalation of a relatively simple miscommunication. Where divorcing parties have children in common, they find themselves to be lifelong litigants, repeatedly returning to court to alter terms or vindicate a past loss in a recurring parental argument. Education and early intervention can help parties flag existing conflicts before they spiral out of control. Preventive lawyering can identify possible issues and avoid conflicts before they occur. In this article, we show how family lawyers can redirect their attention from acting as postconflict professionals to acting as preventive legal and conflict‐wellness providers.