Involving our hearts in Collaborative Practice is not just a metaphor.  The organ that pumps our blood, also contributes to our thoughts.    Check out what Stu Webb and Deborah Brakeley had to say about actively involving our actual hearts.  Work that they’ve been sharing for several years at the IACP Forum along with Peggy Thompson and Jennifer Tull, who were not able to join us for this conversation. This heart work makes for interesting companion thoughts as research also tells us more about the brain.  See my interview with Pauline Tesler for those advances. “Our ordinary mind always tries to persuade us that we are nothing...

The Initial Interview.  The professional / client relationship begins there.  And goes smoothly – or haltingly – forward, or possibly downward.  Particularly in Collaborative Practice matters, that first meeting can impact the functioning of the entire Team, including the clients. I sat with Woody Mosten and Susan Gamache, two well known Collaborative professionals who have each begun to offer training for professionals focused on this critical, but often under explored, part of the process.  Here’s the video Read about the trainings they offer here: click on ‘slideshare’ to print your own copy of these....

Pauline Tesler, our friend and the Director of the new Integrative Law Institute at Commonweal, talks to us about just what is Integrative Law and how it will be changing how all attorneys see, and do, their work. You can follow ILI at their blog here and at facebook here. Check out their first training in January 2013: Registration is available by clicking here Click ‘slideshare’ above to download or print a copy of this material. ************* “Talking with…” is an ongoing set of videotaped discussions between carl Michael rossi and others who train, practice and/or have an interest in Collaborative Practice....

Once the clients have used my conflict resolution services “my job as a preventive lawyer is just beginning.”  – Woody Mosten This attitude that our work is not ‘done’ simply because the clients are now divorced, or because the parties have reached an agreement, is a key part of the Paradigm Shift involved in Collaborative Practice.  Having seen this connection in Woody’s chapter for the upcoming ABA book Reinventing the Practice of Law, I thought I would ask him to expand upon it.  Here’s our chat. We’d love to continue this theme with the benefit of your comments! Click here to check out the...

Sometimes lawyers and other professionals get into legal disputes. How do they handle those disputes?  What is it like to have them as clients?  What can we learn about ourselves as practitioners and what can we take from those experiences to make us better practitioners when we are working with other clients? Don’t forget to add your thoughts and questions in the comment section below. This is “Talking With….” Woody Mosten, 9 (Would you like to join us for a future conversation? We occasionally invite up to four people. Sign up here for our email list. We send out notices and details of when and how you can join in...

Think about an athlete.  To excel in any sport, whether individual or team, an athlete does not simply walk out on the playing field and compete.  There is an incredible amount of work that goes into being a top-notched athlete: the training; the nutrition; the psychological work; and the support of those around the athlete.  By the time the athlete’s event takes place the idea of “winning” the event is absent from the athlete’s mind.  Instead, the athlete’s focus is on breathing, on form, on the mechanics of how their body moves.  If the athlete does all the little things well, while not everyone can win, the athlete will realize success....