From the desk of My Collaborative Team President, Edward S. Sachs, CPA

One of the better and more unique parts of the Collaborative Process is the pre-brief and de-brief. After all of these years of practicing collaboratively I still am amazed at what goes on in these meetings and how important they are. Four professionals, two of them attorneys, discussing the well-being of their clients and determining how to best serve their clients as a team.

A few years ago, I had a final debrief in a successfully completed case that took way too long and cost way too much in fees. All four professionals were seasoned Collaborative Professionals. The case almost broke down, and ultimately took more time and money, because one of the attorneys allowed their client to take control of the process. Team meetings ceased, and negotiations were handled via email and phone. When a final team meeting was finally called to negotiate the final part of the financial settlement, I was not invited to participate in an effort to save money. During that final meeting there was even a confrontation between the wife’s attorney and the husband. But here we were, in a final debrief, being brutally honest with each other. What had we done wrong? What could we have done to better the outcome? How could we have better kept these parties in the process? What can we learn from this experience?

The two attorneys, Carolann Mazza and Johanna Shields have worked together on several Collaborative cases. At the time I had never worked with any of the team members and our facilitator, Allyson Tomchin, was doing her first Collaborative case. The parties had been in marriage counseling for a number of years and we had the luxury of being able to communicate directly with their therapist (also Collaboratively trained).

Before our first team meeting we had the opportunity to hold two de-briefs. The first one was with the therapist who provided us invaluable information about the parties, including the wife’s need to mother the husband and the husband’s volatility. That de-brief was followed up by a de-brief of just the professional team. Once again, I was amazed. While our facilitator had met with both parties, Johanna had never met the wife and I had not met either. Before the case had even started the four professionals were strategizing over how to best handle these parties, how to best structure the first team meeting and how to best deal with the parties’ issues. I was amazed by the fact that instead of each attorney meeting with their client to figure out how to destroy the other side, we were working together as a team to figure out how to best help this couple. It was clear to the team that managing these parties’ emotions was the key to settling. There are no minor children and the finances are straight forward.

Because we had the benefit of speaking to their therapist and the opportunity to plan how we would work with this couple, the first team meeting went extremely well. You would have never known Allyson was handling her first Collaborative team meeting. We opened by introducing ourselves and then Allyson laid all the elephants in the room right on the table. She made it clear to both the husband and wife that we knew what their issues were. She pulled no punches in describing that the husband was petulant, and the wife had a need to mother the husband. The looks on their faces told the whole story. We had clearly started this case on the right track.

And only because in the Collaborative Process we work as a team, pre-brief and de-brief and utilize whatever sources are available to us to better prepare ourselves for helping the clients achieve their goals.