IACP Blog

Be The Advocate That Your Business Needs

Writers are often stereotyped as people staring at their computer screens while their spouses nag them about finding a "real job." Publishing is the hard bright line that separates the “dreamer” from the “success.”

You may not think you're a writer, but writing is how you share your business with the world. It's the late-night emails, newsletters, and promotional videos that communicate to people who you are and what you value. Your pitch is a thesis statement and your business model is the outline for how you prove your thesis.

Divorce hurts. There is little difference between LGBTQI couples and heterosexual couples. However, the dissolution of LGBTQI partnerships and marriages, as well as divorce from marriages in which one spouse has come out as LGBTQI, poses some additional challenges.

In this blog, we have collected the five most important reasons that make many LGBTQI people shy away from entrusting their case to a court and prefer the support of a Collaborative Practice (CP) team.

In 2006, I began a journey that I had previously only dreamed about. I returned to pursue my doctoral degree after 15 years in private practice as a psychotherapist, working primarily in the field of divorce. While on this path, I had to determine how I could utilize my program of study to not only enhance my career but make a significant difference in the field of Family Therapy, as well as the diverse populations who I served.

In what sometimes may feel like overnight, professionals were forced to find alternatives to traditional in-person meetings and often without the assistance of information technology personnel. Both clients and professionals were required to visit the mysterious "app store" and become fluent with modern virtual communication platforms. As a result, in only a few months, the word "Zoom" has become the modern definition of a meeting.

According to the last information from the Spanish government, as of June 15, 2020, 27,940 people have died due to COVID-19.

From March 13, 2020, our life and country have changed. We could not meet with friends, visit family, walk down the street, or hug. Our country closed down. For many days Spain was in the headlines worldwide due to the spread of infections and many deaths.

Obviously, the courts were closed. Terms of the statute of limitations were suspended. Our time seemed to stand still.

As the co-chair of the Pro-Bono Pilot Project in the Broward County Court House, part of my job is to reach out to our local professional Collaborative community and gather volunteers (including attorneys, neutral facilitators, and neutral financial professionals), who are assigned into teams. When the project began to take off and cases started to be assigned, there was a buzz of excitement amongst our Collaborative professionals.  For many of them, they were finally getting to put the Collaborative Divorce Process into practice!

For children experiencing their parents’ separation, the space between “what was” and “what is next” is a place of loss, waiting, and not knowing. The family is no longer what it once was, but not yet what it will be. Anthropologists have described the transition between states or statuses as “liminality.”

In my memories of childhood, I remember my father saying: He who whispers down a well, about the goods he has to sell, will never make as many dollars, as he who climbs a tree and hollers.[1]

As a child, I could see the tree. It was an oak tree, broad and tall. I could see the well. It was made of stone blocks and had a bucket on a rope. I could even see someone in the tree shouting. I could see it. I thought I understood it. But I never applied it.

In many ways the Collaborative Practice movement stands at the intersection of the well and the tree.

My firm started working from home during the pandemic, and my kids, Landon, age 7, and Kendall, age 4, switched to schooling from home around that same time.

Overnight, I became a stay-at-home mom and homeschool teacher, in addition to my roles as attorney and business owner. Now I not only needed to fill my days with drumming up work for my employees and keeping my worried clients calm, I also needed to keep my kids entertained and somehow squeeze in time to supervise homeschooling. 

I have been a Collaborative professional (attorney) for approximately twenty years. Looking back at my personal and professional evolution as well as the growth of Collaborative Practice, IACP and the Collaborative Law Institute of Minnesota (CLI-MN, my Practice Group), is a nostalgic experience for sure, but importantly, it is informative in my thinking about the future.