That's Not the Sound of One Hand Clapping . . . .
. . . it's the smell of rubber hitting the road.
(right: the scientific representation of rubber hitting the road -- I thought our attorney-engineer readers would appreciate this one -- image from the University of Hamburg)
I have a confession to make. I am poised to become embroiled in a dispute about money and I've hired a litigator to explain to me my rights and possibly to pursue my remedies.
This is one of those moments when you have to decide whether you believe your own B.S. or not. One of those times when you follow your own advice or fall victim to the almost irresistible pull of the way you've always done things.
Let me recount a conversation I had after my first year of mediation practice with a seasoned mediator of commercial cases. This is the conversation that marks my true transition from litigator to conflict resolution specialist. The subject at hand was whether I would co-mediate a will contest with a mediator I'll call Joe.
Joe: The family doesn't want to hire a lawyer. Neither side has a lawyer. They just want to mediate.
Vickie: But I know absolutely nothing about wills, trusts and estates. The parties need to talk to a lawyer first to learn their rights and remedies.
Joe: You still don't get it, do you?
Vickie: What?
Joe: It's not about rights and remedies, it's about interests.
Vickie: But how can they evaluate their interests without knowing their rights and remedies?
Joe: Because they're not interested in what the law says -- they want to do what they believe is right for them as a family under the circumstances.
It took a while for this conversation to sink in. I immediately re-visited one of the more painful periods of my life when I divorced my first husband in 1983. I refused legal advice from my attorney colleagues because, I said, I was going to handle it myself ("a fool for a client"). Why? Because community property laws didn't govern our relationship. (gasps from colleagues)
I didn't need legal representation, I explained, because my husband of 7 years and I had long ago agreed that he would use his funds to put himself through graduate school and I would use my funds to put myself through law school. We'd keep our finances separate until some time in the future when we decided to "marry" our financial affairs. We never did and I wanted to keep my end of the bargain whether the law required me to do so or not (nope, no pre-nup).
And that's what we did. We had interests in looking ourselves in the mirror in the morning -- in honoring our wholly personal and idiosyncratic obligations to one another. We had interests in having a resentment-free future relationship, no matter what form it took -- friends, distant acquaintances or even estranged former spouses. We had interests in making peace with one another because we had mutual friends and we didn't want to divide them up between us like so much material property.
I walked out of that marriage with nothing but my self respect and his last name, under which I'd gotten my law degree and become known in the legal community. He got the house because he could afford to pay the mortgage and his mother had given us --not him -- the down payment. Though I'd contributed to the house payments, he'd kept detailed records of monies he'd loaned me during law school and what I owed him was pretty much what my share of the value of the house was. And though his mother had given the money to "us" and not "him," I knew she'd done so because she believed the marriage would last. It wasn't her intent to give the money to "me." And I loved her. She loved me. I didn't want to burn that bridge.
So, I rented furniture and moved to a one-bedroom apartment in a low-income community in South Sacramento. I was poor again, for a time. And emotionally bereft. But I hadn't added a legal dispute to my troubles. I felt as clean as I could in severing a relationship that had contributed so much to the emotional strength I needed to prepare for, commence and finish law school at the top of my class. I couldn't have done it without my husband. He contributed the love, the emotional stability and the undeviating belief in my potential that were necessary to my success in law school and in the first couple of years of my legal practice.
Those are interests.
I know, I know. You're saying -- but those are personal interests and you're writing a blog about commercial interests between corporate entities and they have no feelings.
No.? Taken your own emotional temperature lately? Or that of your clients? Stick around. You're in the conflict resolution business no matter how sophisticated it is legally or complex it is financially. And conflict only happens between people.
If the insights from the social psychology of conflict could help you manage your clients, your staff and your case load more effectively and efficiently; if you were in better control of the escalation and de-escalation of conflict in your practice; if you were happier when you went to the firm or to court or to a deposition or to a settlement conference or to trial than you are now, would you want to learn something about a body of knowledge that could help you do that?
I think you would. I have been paying attention to these matters as my central occupation for four years now and the rubber is about to hit the road.
You're in the right place. Keep coming back.
