 to the creative life brought to you by the American Creativity Association's Austin Global Chapter and Think Tech Hawaii. On your host, Phyllis Bleece, and joining me today is our guest, Amy Rodnick. Amy is a board certified family law lawyer by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization and has been since 1990. She's a super lawyer and AV rated with Martindale Hubbell and she is here today to talk about the collaborative law alternatives to having and going through a divorce than traditional judicially litigious divorce proceedings. And she serves as the current president of Collaborative Divorce Austin, Texas. Amy, welcome. Hi Phyllis, thank you. Glad to be here. Good, could you tell us what it means to be a collaborative law lawyer in the field of family law and maybe as a part of that, what your role has been in this area and how you ever got into it? Well, the way I got into it was that I have had a litigation practice, oh gosh, since the 80s. And back when I first got licensed, female lawyers who interviewed at big firms also got asked many times how many babies we were gonna have when we would get pregnant and how our husband felt about us working long hours. So many of us decided to strike out into private practice rather than put up with some of that. And I was an assistant attorney general for five years that decided it was time to go out on my own. And I found out very quickly that family law was what was gonna pay the bills. And so I also found I enjoyed family law. And so the more litigation I did, the more I came to believe that litigation was not in my client's interest as a rule. I mean, there's some cases obviously that have to be heard by a judge, but very few really. And I started looking for what would be a better way. And there was a system developed in the state of Minnesota by a fellow named Stuart Webb back in the early 1990s called collaborative law. And by the year 2000, it had spread to Texas. People were starting to teach seminars on it. And it basically proposed a different way, a different paradigm for clients and the parties. And probably the best way to explain it is I have a little video that a fellow named Tim Crouch of Crouch Group created. And Tim's wife is a collaborative lawyer. And that's especially is designing websites for collaborative attorneys and helping them publicize collaborative law and make it known to the public. So if we have that little video, maybe we could queue it up. Collaborative divorce is one of the options for a divorce. Most people are familiar with the adversarial process, which is court. But a collaborative divorce is an option that enables couples to divorce without fighting in court. The best way to describe how the collaborative divorce process works is the story of the orange. The story of the orange goes like this. There's one orange and two children. Each child wants the orange. How can we effectively double the orange so that each child gets what they want? By asking the right questions, we can determine that one child wants the rind of the orange to make icing for cupcakes, while the other child wants the juice. In this way, we can essentially double the orange so that each child gets what they want. We can do that same thing for families in the collaborative divorce process by asking the right questions. In a collaborative divorce, each client has an attorney so that they have their own advocate to support and advise them in their case. The case is resolved without the fighting, animosity, and long-term emotional and financial damage that court can cause. At the first joint meeting, the clients state what is important to them and their family, such as for the children to have security and stability, for the clients to each have financial security and stability, and for both parents to have a good relationship with the children after the divorce is over. In most cases, the collaborative team includes a financial professional who assists the couple in gathering the financial information about their assets and their debts, and helps them develop their post-divorce budgets. The other member of the collaborative divorce team is a trained mental health professional, but these people do not do therapy. Rather, they help clients develop their parenting plan if they have children, and they coach the clients on communication techniques that will help them keep the process moving. Communication breakdowns slow the process down, which ends up costing the clients money. Through a series of joint meetings, which are usually two hours long, the team and the couple will review the financial information in the parenting plan, develop options for the division of their assets and liabilities, and negotiate an agreement that is acceptable to them both. Finally, the attorneys draft the agreement and the clients meet one last time to sign the decree. Then it is presented to the judge in a short hearing. This is the only time that anyone in the case goes to court. The couple, and if they have children, their entire family is less harmed by the divorce when they take advantage of the collaborative divorce process. For more information about collaborative divorce, contact Collaborative Divorce Austin. Visit collaborativedivorceaustin.com. For anybody watching who's been through a divorce and showed up many times in court and agonized and felt alone and isolated, this would be an entirely new experience. And just so the audience knows, I'm a lawyer too. I've focused more on tax and corporate, where there is also a collaborative law council and section. And I wanna mention that there is a healthy collaborative law bar in the Hawaiian Islands. So in not just family law, but in tax, corporate, and in other areas, this collaborative law process you just showed us Amy is done outside of the courtroom and done at a round table situation. That's happening now more and more. And let me just check in with you now. What are some of the highlights that you would like this audience take away from what we just saw in the context of it being a new innovative and creative approach to divorce? Wow, well, that's a pretty loaded question, Phyllis, because there are many parts to it. But I think that first of all, what you have to understand is that collaborative divorce works as a team approach. And it is an interest-based process, meaning that in your standard divorce process you may have somebody, Texas is a community property state, for example, and I believe Hawaii is as well, but you might have somebody come in making a ridiculous demand, like I want 80% of the community estate. And the other person says, no, I want 80% of the community estate. Well, one of them's up here, one of them's up here, how do we get them here? And with collaborative, we don't encourage that kind of positional bargaining. I mean, it's like what mediators deal with when they deal with insurance lawyers. And so what we looked for, first of all, is before the first meeting to have the parties meet with the mental health professional and tell the person what their interests are in this process. And it's not rocket science. Most of the interests are going to look like I don't want the children to be messed up. I want financial security when this is done. I don't wanna spend everything we have on attorney fees. So those are some of the interests that people usually have. And then, okay, did you have another question? No, no, no, I didn't know I was going to, once you finish your thought, and yes, I have quite a few. Well, that there basically is how the process begins. And we can get into how the meetings work later, but why don't you go ahead and ask your question? Well, I am, you know, I think in terms of framing, it's important to understand that the things that you just talked about happening can happen with the people in the room together instead of hiring two sets of financial specialists and two sets of counselors who are gonna give a report back to the court about how the children are faring and what kind of parent you are. Everything that you just talked about, which needs to be covered is done one time. It sounds like with the parties together in a collaborative process. And it isn't obvious for people who are thinking about going into it or have before that you would never discuss those things out loud with the opposing party. Is that right? Well, that's correct. And some people even put the parties on the same side of the table. Other people prefer that they sit catty cornered from their spouse, you know, next to their lawyer. And I'm also a mediator. And so in many mediation circles, it's considered a no-no in divorce cases to put people in the same room and mediators just separate them immediately. We certainly give people the option of having private conversations with their attorney. The attorneys are still bound by their code of professional responsibility. They are ethically bound to represent their client. But what our motto is, you don't have to be a jerk while you're representing your client, you know? And we can all be civilized about this. And when you show people that we're approaching this as a problem to be solved rather than a battle to be won, then it's very, very different. Well, let's talk a minute about what you said. You don't have to be a jerk when you're representing someone to be, you know, and the lawyers will do that anically to get paid to make their client think that they have their best interests at heart, that they're their advocate. But as I understand the collaborative law in the tax and corporate area, once the parties, if something falls out of bed in the discussions, the lawyers who've been part of the collaborative law process don't even represent them if they go to court. If so, those lawyers really must engage effectively, collaboratively. They aren't even gonna stick around if this goes to court. Is that right? That's absolutely correct, Phyllis. And that's a core tenet of collaborative is the fact that if you hire a collaborative lawyer, they cannot represent you in a litigation case. And they would have to withdraw if the collaborative process fails. Now, you know, I will tell you maybe two or 3% of the collaborative cases I've had failed and they were usually because somebody didn't buy into it in the first place and had an ulterior motive for choosing collaborative law. And when they found out it wasn't gonna work for them quite the way they thought, then they opted out. But as a rule, most people must have a buy in for it to work. And if they do buy into it, they're committed. You know, they really wanna get the case settled. And I wanna add one other thing about that is that many people think collaborative is, oh, you know, low conflict cases only where people are gonna hold hands and sing kumbaya. And that's absolutely not true. We do a lot of high conflict cases in the collaborative process, but at least we have clients, even if they know they are high conflict, they're self-aware enough to know they don't wanna parade their dirty laundry in front of a judge. And that this process is gonna be private, you know, courthouses are public places. And so if you wanna go have a war of the roses at the courthouse, you know, anybody can come. They don't even have to buy a ticket. They can just come and watch. Well, well, just like the Johnny Depp and Herd trial which garnered some of the largest following and, you know, since trials have begun. Well, I'm pleased to say I didn't watch any of that trial. Well, you know, let me stay on that for just a minute in terms of creativity and innovative processes because they really require a safe environment. If someone's at work and they wanna suggest a new idea, they're not gonna do it in a combative environment. They'll be afraid, they'll be knocked down and slammed down. And I'm sort of marveling at how collaborative law is quintessentially a creative and innovative process in the sense that it does require safety. It does require informality, spontaneity, a relaxed setting and all of the things that do happen in collaborative law and just can't happen in a full-out litigation process. Like everything you say, you check three times to make sure you didn't send it to the other side. And so you do create that safety net when people walk in the room. Is that right? Well, and you bring up another good point and that is that in collaborative, we don't play gotcha. And if somebody makes a mistake, it gets pointed out. So as a lawyer, if let's say I accidentally send something to opposing counsel, I shouldn't have sent, that person is under an obligation to send it back and say, hey, I don't think you intended to send this to me. If this were a litigation context, you'd be playing gotcha with that lawyer and then probably up in front of the judge having a hearing about whether you get it back or not. So that's an important aspect. Another aspect that I think you touched on earlier as well is that in litigation, you have the battle of the hired guns. So you might have two child custody specialists in litigation. You might have two different appraisers on the real estate. You might have people valuing pensions who use different methodology. And then the judge may just pick a number in the middle, even if that's not really the number they ought to be picking just cause they're not sure what to do. And so with collaborative experts must be jointly chosen. Now, it doesn't stop anybody from getting a second opinion if they think the expert truly was wrong or made a mistake. But again, if you get a second opinion, that person's jointly chosen. So, you know, and experts are often hired even in collaborative cases to do things like value real estate or arts and antiques, you know, there are a number of reasons why you would have a third party expert. And if you want a third party expert as to parenting plans and what you're gonna do with the children, we have the option of bringing in what's called a child specialist as a member of the team. Because normally the mental health professional is not there to interview the kids. So we can bring in a child specialist. Well, you know, there's two things about what we're describing here as innovative from the normal litigation track. And one is that for a lot of people going through a divorce I think they really wonder if they should hire a specialist around their parenting and how the kids are gonna be or around the finances. They may want to avoid that to start with. And for collaborative law, those subject matter experts are part of a team. I mean, you discuss that right away. You don't have to wonder about it. There is a form that is driving a substance that is more of healthy and likely to lead to a future after divorce for the kids and everybody where they didn't even have those subject matter experts brought in. Now it's part of the format in that sense. And then another thing that I'm hearing or that I understand is that even the subject matter experts won't be available if it goes to litigation. So all the time and money they put into that. But go ahead and take off from it because... Well, that's absolutely correct, Billus. And I think they're... I've used this analogy with some clients and they think it makes a lot of sense. So I'm gonna bring it up here. And I think one thing that has been in the news in the last few years has been police reform, for example, and how we can reform policing. And many people have put their heads together, police officers, police chiefs, members of the public. And what you heard from them was oftentimes police officers are being asked to wear four or five different hats sometimes. They're supposed to be a warrior. They're supposed to be a social worker. They're supposed to have skills they may not have been taught. And it's a good analogy to lawyers. If we substitute police officer for lawyer, oftentimes we were expected to be lawyers and social workers and accountants. And really we're better off having a social worker and an accountant and we can be lawyers but we don't have to be warriors. We can sit back, let the team do its job and butt in if we think somebody's misquoting the law or going in a direction that legally doesn't make sense or doesn't make sense for our client. But the bottom line is we're dividing up those roles and assigning them to people who could be better at them. And in connection with this, I wanna bring up one other thing that I hear often and I know other collaborative lawyers do too. And it's like, oh, well, if you're gonna have a collaborative team, that's gonna be really expensive, isn't it? And I go, wait a minute. You're paying 450, 500 an hour for a board certified attorney who then you're paying that hourly rate to be an accountant and to be your social worker when you call us about some problem. And at half that rate for many of these folks or less, you can have the social worker there and they can deal with what they're supposed to be dealing with instead of lawyers, two different lawyers inventorying the financial aspect of the estate. We have the person we would have hired anyway as a hired gun, but they're a neutral instead of their inventorying the estate. So you really, it's a more efficient process. It's not necessarily more expensive and it's certainly not more expensive than litigation. Is it more expensive than people sitting down at a table with Starbucks and writing out a settlement on a napkin? Well, of course, you know, but most people with assets or who have children who need to work out a parenting plan, it's well worth whatever they do spend for it. Well, and then just hold that thought and compare it even to mediation because mediation has been around a lot longer and arbitration, arbitration doesn't come into family law as much as it does tax and corporate and real estate, but the idea of mediation also doesn't have that form that drives a whole new substance. Is that right? Because you are a mediator. I am and I have an active mediation practice, but I think where people get really confused is they think somehow that collaborative divorce and mediation are very similar or almost identical, which is not true. I mean, the similarity they both have is that they are what we call ADR processes or alternative dispute resolution process. However, we've explained, you know, I think pretty thoroughly, you know, in the time we have in the show how collaborative works, mediation is normally something you use at the end of a case, not the beginning is a lot of people think, not when people don't have lawyers and before they hire lawyers, it should be used at the end of a divorce case if the case cannot settle any other way. And the mediator is a neutral. I mean, I know as a mediator and when I've had clients who needed mediation, I've only used attorney mediators or, you know, and often retired judges make good mediators, not always, but often. And so a mediator is going to deal with positional bargaining, where people get put in separate rooms, they may make outrageous demands and either of those rooms or make demands, they know the other side won't take and then it takes forever to get back to settlement. And mediation's great, don't get me wrong. I mean, it's a great development in the law, but the idea is that if you do your collaborative case correctly, hopefully you won't need mediation because the collaborative meetings shouldn't last more than about two hours. If you go to mediation, you're probably gonna be in the mediator's office all day. So don't think it's cheaper to somehow do that. And then the mediator is gonna start telling you well, this is what I think a judge is gonna do if you don't settle this case. Now, your last alternative after mediation is court. That's the next step. And we can do mediation in collaborative, but I've only had to do it in a few cases that were extremely high conflict. Well, that is really important, I think, to learn about just what kind of innovative and creative processes that people have available to them when they're thinking about having to go through a divorce. And that said, we've got about two and a half minutes left. I need to close the show. Before I do that, I do wanna point out that there is a collaborative law section in all the Hawaiian islands. And people can look that up. We could leave it on the blog and comment area of where the show lives on the various YouTube and video platforms. Is there one final thing you wanted to make sure that the folks knew about collaborative law? Well, I think if I had to sum it up, when I was a litigator, which I did for 35 years, I always had the feeling, you're at the whim of a judge. And I mean, in Travis County, we've been very lucky. We have many very good judges, but they could have had a bad day. They could have had a bad morning and you're the afternoon case and you're putting it in the judge's hands with collaborative urine control. Yeah, thank you. Well, I love that. So this really is putting your own life in your family and children into your own hands. Well, thank you, Amy. We will leave it there for today. And you've been watching The Creative Life on Think Tech Hawaii, coming from the American Creativity Association's Austin Global Chapter. I have been discussing how innovation in the law comes about through collaborative law especially in the area of divorce with board-certified legal specialist Amy Rodnick. Mahalo, Amy, for joining us. And mahalo to our viewers for tuning in. I'm Phyllis Blyse. We'll be back in two weeks for another edition of The Creative Life. Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at thinktechawaii.com. Mahalo.