 Okay, well here we are okay um 12 o'clock rock And we're here doing a show that I have wanted to do for a long time actually the police of Jacobs and and the reason is that she is A common good person trying to help the world trying to help people who might otherwise have a bad time and that's my Understanding of it and she finds Tom deGrasse and Tom deGrasse is of like mind Back even doing it longer. Yeah Trying to make people, you know get through divorce process without injuring themselves and the people around them It's really a simple task, but it has huge effect whether they realize it or not on their lives Now the bar association over my time watching and actually participating in divorce process back in the 70s Felt minted a lot of bad feeling among people lawyers were seen as instruments of of damage You know, I want you to hurt my spouse And of course the lawyer, you know in those days anyway would take that as a cultural point in the practice And you go out of his way to hurt people and then the other lawyer would try to hurt people It was a gladiatorial kind of affair and in the process the the clients were hurt and the judges who They encouraged it honestly a number of them did and so the result was damage and destruction It was really awful to watch it. I couldn't stand it, but you guys came up with another solution to that polo divorce and Mediation Center along the same lines that you've dedicated your your professional time and Thought process and your hearts to it trying to make people do this in civilized ways. Isn't it glorious? You must feel good every day. Oh, yeah, so let's see Lisa is prettier, but Thomas older by far Good, what are you doing Lisa? Okay? Well Jay I have my own firm and it's called better way divorce or also known as pulmonary divorce And so what I do is I help families who are going through that really difficult Emotionally laden process of separating or divorcing and really trying to do it in focused in on problem solving and helping manage their emotions because it is a difficult process and Helping them step-by-step go get through that process particularly if they have children Because it having kids of course makes things more complicated more complex In that the spouses will need to continue to work together as co-parents With their children. So, you know, we find ways to help guide them through so they can still continue to talk with one another respect one another and Really care for their children in the best manner hopefully to reduce the amount of Negative impact that it'll have on the family and on the children, you know But the system this is not intuitively what you would find in the system what you would find in the system You know classically is you represent somebody represent that person's interest you want to win And they want you to be an instrument of you know their their efforts to win and all that and so and you know The system isn't you know, the system is not really built the system classically is not really built around this Right. So how do you make yourself a mediation person a pono person finding the Pono way? How do you do that without crossing any, you know, classical legal conflict lines, right? Well, I mean there has been a shift, you know here in Hawaii. Fortunately, we are in the forefront of Community mediation across the United States Peter Adler. Yeah, we're not alone. It's a big deal all around the country It all around the country and you know since we here in Hawaii have started it Lo-ha and hope on a phone. Oh, so they're so that's a place that does that Yes So so it isn't new but it does take time for the general public to kind of shift their Their mindset from you know, we're gonna slug it out. I'm gonna try to do what I can to you know kind of Get back. Do we have the classical divorce lawyers in town? Yes Yes, there is still instruments. Yeah, so so depending on what the couples process what what they choose to do They could do it the classical slug it out way or they could do it in a gentler way Where we're really trying to focus in on needs and values and interest-based solutions So, you know, I see that there is a movement more towards doing it a more pono way But you know things don't happen overnight and people do have other other choices that they can make But just fortunately because Tom and I and other people are more focused in on mediation and problem-solving and helping them Deal with their emotions in a more in a healthier fashion There are professionals out there. So we're all banding together to let the general public know that there is there are other Choices available to them. It's a movement, isn't it? Yeah It is it is but movements take time. Yeah, okay, so and dedication, of course and talk about time Tom has been doing this since 1932 well before How did you get into this Tom? well If you're involved in the adversarial divorce process, you're gonna have a lot of blood splattered all over you and after a while You get tired of cleaning yourself up And you get you meaning the lawyer. Yes And also you tie it your family gets tired of having a deal with a basket case Right because of the high emotional content That's involved. You know, we know that divorce is the second most traumatic thing that happens to people I mean, that's a scientific fact and First is death right death of a child. Okay? so For a family and so I determined that first of all it's a family that goes through this process Not just the individual that you're counseling all those Relationships and that indeed you haven't in my view in our view You have an ethical obligation that you owe to your client who is not operate operating at a hundred percent. Sure We know that the IQ level and the emotional IQ of individuals going through The divorce process gets lowered significantly So with that on between fight-and-flight exactly just a human condition or freeze which is the other the other aspect Do nothing bury your head in the sand. Okay, so the thought is that you're taking a family husband wife Co-parents children and the extended family and in some facts the community too because there's tribes that develop the husband's tribe and the Wives tribe and then there's all the new marriages that are going to occur the step children and what have you so Complex so you have a in our view the lawyer in that situation has a real ethical obligation to make sure that The clients that he or she is working with are making sound judgment decisions Okay, and so one becomes involved in helping them Transform their lives rather than seeing divorce in the usual cultural context as being a disaster Well, I you know the picture you're painting both of you is that this isn't this isn't really You know applying the law so much as it's a it's a combination of things It's applying the law in a in a pono way in a humane way And it's using psychology. It's using a little cultural knowledge It's it's attitudinal and it's your attitude affecting their attitudes. It's a Social experience Yeah, and we see what we do is a very rich holistic process because we bring in Financial professionals and also mental health professionals to help the couple really just deal with all of the things There's not pure divorce is not purely a legal issue. In fact, it's much more of an emotional Yeah, I think we were talking maybe 90% yeah, right, so if we can help them manage that and get them into a place where they're really, you know Really using their reasoning skills rather than just the knee-jerk emotional reactions. That's what the damages Yeah, you know you we talked about this before when you and I spoke a couple of years ago I guess it was yeah, and one thing I remember is this this use of experts So and you you put them in the same room put them together or do you go one by one? The way I've been doing it is like for an initial meeting. We try to encourage the whole team to all meet together So people can get to know each other the the clients, you know Really get to build trust amongst the various professionals But because it gets to be costly because you know each professional is billing for his or her time We don't always have to meet all together. Yeah, but the concept should be yeah that there's there's a team There's a team definitely and and that is more than just that you get the advice from all these, you know experts It's that it's a recognition a realization That there are all kinds of issues involved here and you can't separate the emotional from the financial You have to address all of this right together and and that you know makes for rationality doesn't it? Yeah, it's it's a matter of helping people move from the Olympic reptilian ancient brain There you go. You said, you know fight freeze, etc To the prefrontal cortex The reasoning But you see this reflected in popular culture now So the image the old image do the one that you were acquainted with when you were doing divorce law in the 70s is the Kramer versus Kramer Okay, oh, I never forget that All out warfare right all out war take no business. Pate remember Pate and then she told me it was the dog And now and now you have people like Angela Jolie talking about a conscious uncoupling Okay, so there is the movement and that's the movement that Lisa was referring to yeah Sometimes it moves at a glacier place, but as we see in the Antarctic now the glaciers are moving a lot faster Everything's faster in the 21st century The other thing Jay to keep in mind is that Collaborative law really is turning especially in the family law area is turning the role of the lawyer on its head Yeah, we get paid now for helping people to reach Common ground to reach an understanding that they can live with that protects the children children of first in my book in our book Okay, that's number one and I'll mantra throughout the process is remember the children Remember the children and remember the children because the first thing that flies out the window As much as parents will say the children because they become instruments. Oh, yeah Divorce is such a self-centered activity. It's just a human response. Okay, so but the lawyers now get paid to To bring people together rather than to keep them apart. How do you we get fired? We get fired if anybody votes for the courtroom. We're fired That's in the contract, right? Yeah, so we put our money where our mouth is that you know We're in it too that we want everybody to arrive it in a mutual mutually acceptable and sustainable agreement But you can't throw them in a room You know, I remember I think I told you back when I had a client who said I am going to My wife and me you are going to get to Boris But we have to work out the property and we have a friend and he's a business partner We both know him for many years and the three of us are going to get in a room with him Right, and we're going to write it on a yellow pad the private judge, right? The private judge And we trust them. Yeah, that's simple and when we're finished, you know we'll give you the yellow paper if I tell and you'll write it up in a property settlement agreement and You know, you can say you represent one side of the other which I thought I had to do I'd like to ask you about that And which will make it fair. Okay? Okay, that worked out and we had a very nice sociable experience, but You know, can you throw them in a room? Can you find this fair-minded person in the middle? Are you the fair-minded person? And if you are the fair-minded person, who do you represent exactly don't don't you have to represent one side or the other? It's a cliffhanger. Okay, and I really would like to hear how you handle that Professionally personally sociologically. Don't answer because I'm going to take a short break. Okay We're gonna give you time to think tick tick tick. We'll be right back after this break Aloha, my name is Richard Emory host of condo insider More than a third of Hawaii's population live in some form of association But our show is all about educating board members and owners about their responsibilities and obligations and providing solutions for a great Association you can watch me live on Thursdays 3 p.m. To 4 p.m. Each week Aloha Aloha, Kako. I'm Marcia joiner inviting you to navigate the journey with us We are here every Wednesday morning at 11 a.m. And we Really want you to be with us where we look at the options and choices of end-of-life care Aloha We're live and we're coming back on that cliffhanger Exactly what role do you play and you were talking during the break about mediation versus counsel? Tell me about that. Yeah, well, you know, I I am both Mediator and a collaborative divorce attorney, so But I can't play two roles at the same time for you know a family situation So when somebody comes and sees me and is requesting services of mine I explained the different ways I can help them and I even explain The process of litigation and I don't do that. So I say that if you want to Leave that option open or if you want to litigate them that there's that's something I can't do and then I give You don't do that. I don't do litigation at all and and that because I want to be clear that What I do for people is to help people arrive I support them in a at arriving at agreements without Slugging it out. It's not just your preference. It's a practical thing You really don't want to do litigation because that confuses you and it confuses the way the system sees you Yeah, and it's also just really for me personally I wouldn't choose to do that because it's so stressful and it just goes against my personal values of the way I feel I add value to Clients is help them talk and help them resolve conflict in a more peaceful manner. Oh, you can say that but in fact No, but that's going to spend your time on the planet You want to spend it in a in a nice way helping people not hurting people, right? I'm not asking too much, right, right, right, right? So so they select their process and you know right now Tom and I are working to go We're both experienced mediators. We're working to grow the collaborative divorce movement And so it's it's a little bit different in that Tom and I are lawyers so Each party has their own independent counsel that they can talk one-on-one with and find out what their legal rights and obligations are But we do work as a team a team with other collaborative lawyers and other professionals that work So I come to you when I say Lisa I need your help and you say well, I got this Chinese menu here Call me you want me to be your lawyer you want me to be a meter as I want you to be my mediator, right? Yes, and then you say well You know you also need to have a lawyer a reasonable lawyer and I will help you connect Is this what happens and I help you connect with somebody who can act as your individual counsel Is that what happened? Correct, right? So if if the person who contacts me and his or her spouse want to hire me as a mediator I make it clear what my role is and that if the mediation were to not work out Then I can't turn around and become somebody's lawyer because I my job is the mediators to help both of them and remain impartial and neutral In mediation we all mediators will always encourage Parties before they sign an agreement. You know, they really ought to have a consultant lawyer Take take a look at the agreement hopefully not shredded apart because all the effort that the mediators and the parties So you might refer me to Tom As correct my personal counsel look at the mediation agreement give me advice about that Right for a limited time. So maybe not part of the entire process a project Is it look at this one document and advise me about that? Is that what it is? Right, right? So it could be more for a limited scope or a limited purpose. Yeah, okay? So now now we're in mediation. Okay, we're in the mediation husband and wife are here together with you Do they both have individual counsel and you know in that crucible if they choose to Yeah, so I've done mediations where either one or both of them have attorneys that it will attend with them to the mediation sessions So you might you might recommend that I hire Tom Right if they specifically ask for a referral for a consulting attorney and Tom as a mediator might recommend that I hire you In a role as counsel, right? So it's just a different wearing a different hat but participating in the process And you have to be very clear about the hat. Yeah. Yeah Huge ethical implications as to what hats you're wearing and making sure that the For instance, if it's mediation, it's not my client. Okay, if I'm acting as a media It's a mediation participant If I'm acting as a collaborative lawyer, then it's my client And my first obligation is to make sure they understand absolutely the key here is education Not only in terms of the process that you're choosing which is very important to be clear Is it adversarial is it mediation or is it in the middle of that pendulum swing? Which is collaborative law because there are cases although mediation in my mind is the ideal way to go Okay, it doesn't always fit the situation. You have imbalances in bargaining ability You have imbalances in financial ability who controls the purse strings and the family etc So a lot of times and it's often the woman that's on the lowest spectrum there Okay, and if you can't if you're unable as a mediator as a neutral as a peacemaker to balance Okay, that imbalance then mediation is not the proper fit Collaborative law however is right in the middle there because you have your lawyer You have that assurance that that lawyer is there looking out for your interest But at the same time you bring a mediator sensibility To all of this a peacemaker sensibility I should say that this should be settled in a way that's the least harmful Particularly to the children and because you have the number of people involved including the experts You can say that the dollar per hour of process is going to be multiples and Theoretically expensive at the end of the day. It's not more expensive. It's way cheaper than having a fight Isn't it fights are expensive? Yeah fights get to be very very expensive. So yeah, even if they have a full team typically they will Save dollars and then you know the value of what they're spending of again is much more They're getting so much more value. You're getting karma. Yeah karma is everything. Yeah Karma is how you spend your time on the planet And there's another way of looking at it and I sometimes explain this too, which is that you know when you were contemplating marriage Assuming that you could afford it. Okay, you spared no expense You got the best wedding dress you catered the best affair you could you invited all your friends and your relatives The best champagne All the planning that went into that Now you're in another life transition here and although it's totally different on the emotional side You should put that kind of investment into it because you're looking at the future of your children You're going to be co-parents forever And if you can have a if you could come out of this so you're not hating each other And respect what you accomplished as parents and when you were married Then you've learned something and you bring that to the next relationship things are going to be a lot better and your co-parent think choices are going to be and So much easier and you're not going to go back to court 15 times because you feel you got screwed on the alimony Or you should be getting more child support or whatever it might be Just like you wanted to build a good marriage at the beginning you want to build a good second chapter Next chapter where everybody gets along and you invest for a good return But let me go to the point of what happens When it doesn't go according to plan And then you try to get people to understand how this works and all the benefits of going through a collaborative process But they don't get it and they go back to that reptilian thing Okay How does the lawyer how does the mediator deal with that? Yeah It is a challenge. I mean when um, we were being trained. I remember our trainer saying that uh, Doing collaborative practice is so much harder than litigating because litigating the rules are clear You know, everyone's role everybody being a you know A gladiator for the other party slugging it out to the very end until we settle the day before trial You know, you just kind of know what you're not But but you know that it's it's it's easier to fight than it is to try to Put reason when sometimes things don't really seem to make sense You know when the parties are just kind of all going nuts So it is a challenge. There there have been times where I've said, you know, we've reached an impasse gosh You guys are arguing about like three hours of holiday time and we're going to spend another how much more money on this So I'd say, you know, if we don't if we don't get beyond impasse by the end of this week I'm really going to say we really need to bring in a coach and really just help You guys deal with your emotions because it's it's really not making sense For you guys a coach is a mental health professional that will work with the parties to get them emotionally prepared to move one for both of them Well, they could do one for both of them or they could each have their own coach like a marriage counselor kind of thing Sort of yeah, but they're rather they're going yeah Instead of going through all the past hurts and everything we really try to focus them in on the present day and on the future Um, so yeah, it's getting them focused to really just be prepared to fit to really You guys are so close to the finish line. Let's just get past You know, you gotta be the the you gotta orchestrate this you got to be the one who sort of supervises it Yeah, and it must become time. There must come times when you can't When they are breaking stride When I know if you get better at it, that'll happen less. But does it ever happen? Well, um Let's see. Have I had it maybe I can be helpful here. Yeah, there's a whole chapter in my book That was published Last year in 2016 called light on peacemaking how to deal with those difficulties that arise and they do arise on a fairly regular basis It's a very very good question One answer is the selection of the clients that you're taking If you have somebody coming in, okay, that is so emotionally strung out Okay, that they're not susceptible to the big thing which is education Reading material there's online places as a there's a there's a website called up to parents Dot org where you can go on for no No charge totally free and it's interactive. It'll take you through the whole process emotionally and otherwise Okay, if you do your homework if you're selecting people, okay Who are open to reason are you going to have emotion the emotions are going to go off It's just an emotional process. There's no escape from that But how you handle it, okay In the end if none of that works if you selected the wrong the wrong person to represent or the wrong process And if you tried your best to educate them my program is called educated divorce and and the program fails I can't educate them Then there's certain things that you can do one of them is the classic walk away. Okay, which is You guys we've given it our best shot I've done everything that I possibly can as a peacemaker here to help you And we there's still in transigence on the part of one of both of you and I understand that and I understand where it's coming from And how that's hooked to your emotions However, there's very little more that I can do. I don't feel good about accepting any further Uh, renumeration from you because uh at this point there's not too much I can do However, I want to let you know that I'm leaving open that door When I walk away from here, what you're going to go back into the legal system You're going to go pay $500 an hour each to fight it out over three three holiday days. Come on now See we get that. Yeah, I mean fortunately the success rate in both mediation and collaborative divorce is is above 90 percent And there's about a 2 percent reconciliation rate So we're we're talking about a small percentage of people who maybe didn't self-select The right process for them But since it's self-selecting because these both of both mediation and collaborative divorce are um Voluntary processes as long as we do proper screening and give good education And they have informed consent about the benefits, but the small risks that we could fall out Most of the time they're successful But you know what the feeling I get actually from the the last time we talked till now is that this is an evolution That this movement is getting more sophisticated People involved are learning more about how to deal with it the people who come into it are they are better to better likely to understand What their obligations are and what the benefits are? So that you know, we have a dynamic going on this is It's this is moving ahead into the community more people are involved It is becoming you know more of a contribution that you guys make To the whole process is civilized civil civilization is civilizing of the process But I want to offer you both the opportunity to talk to the public The public may not know what we're talking about. I hope they pick up some of this anyway But can you tell them what you'd like them to take away from this discussion? There's camera one the red light go for it. Okay. Did you want to go first time? Go ahead? Otherwise you risk a man-a-log We wanted to let the public know that there are different ways that they can work through conflict and uh collaborative law is is one way where You have the independent advice of your own lawyer But you also have a team of of professionals out there to help you including The other party who right now you're presently not in full agreement with The other party can have a collaborative lawyer too and we work as a team and we work together and we really focus in on Helping the two of you problem solve and come up with solutions that are sustainable Collaborative law is it seems to be the most popular in working with family law conflicts or divorces but The possibility of applying it to other types of conflicts is is out there and available I've started doing elder law mediation so You know and there of course when you've got an an aging adult and adults Children siblings who may not be in full agreement about what to do with their aging parents There's a lot of emotions involved. There's money issues. There's caretaking issues So I see collaborative practice also evolving into those types of areas that aren't right. Yeah, the human condition This means Controversies in general. Yes, and can be subject to and improved by collaborative law Would you agree with that tom? You got one minute? Absolutely My message real quick is something I mentioned before Divorce does not have to be a Financial and emotional disaster. Okay, it can be transformative if it's handled well in a conscious manner If you're retaining peacemakers People who want to help you and your family get through a very very difficult time in your life so Finding the right process if you're considering a divorce or legal separation is extremely important and speaking to a professional That can help you Determine which process is appropriate for you is extremely important. You know you guys, you know Think tank is into the common good Our management our staff all the people around law volunteers We're into the common good and you are perfect for us. We love you. We love the contribution And we love you