Written by My Collaborative Team Marketing Director Eric Sachs
Most Collaborative Professionals don't wake up one morning and decide to derail a case. In fact, quite the opposite.
We enter the room wanting to help. We want our clients to feel heard. We want to guide difficult conversations toward thoughtful solutions. We believe in the process, and we've committed ourselves to practicing differently.
So why do some Collaborative cases slowly lose momentum?
It's rarely because someone said something outrageous or a single meeting went terribly wrong. More often, Collaboration begins to unravel through a series of small moments that hardly seem significant on their own. A quick interruption. An assumption made too soon. A phrase that unintentionally puts someone on the defensive.
Like tiny cracks in a foundation, these habits don't always show themselves immediately, but over time they can weaken the trust that Collaboration depends on.
One of the biggest challenges is that many of these behaviors are actually signs of experienced professionals. Lawyers are trained to identify issues quickly. Financial professionals are taught to solve problems efficiently. Mental health professionals often recognize familiar emotional patterns within minutes. Those instincts are valuable, but in a Collaborative setting they can sometimes get in the way.
When we think we already know where someone is going, we stop listening as carefully. We begin preparing our response before they've finished speaking. We jump in to clarify, correct, or redirect because we're trying to be helpful. The irony is that what feels efficient to us can feel dismissive to someone else. People don't just want to reach an agreement. They want to feel understood along the way.
The same is true with assumptions. Experience allows us to recognize patterns, but no two families are exactly alike. We may think we know why a client is angry, why a proposal was rejected, or what the other professional is trying to accomplish. Sometimes we're right, but Collaboration isn't built on being right. It's built on remaining curious long enough to discover what we might be missing. That curiosity is often what separates a productive conversation from one that quietly stalls.
Another habit that can creep into Collaborative Practice is something we might call advocacy creep. Every attorney in the collaborative process has a responsibility to advocate for their client. That never changes. What can change, however, is the way advocacy begins to resemble litigation.
It happens gradually. We become focused on defending positions instead of exploring interests. We start speaking for our clients instead of creating space for them to speak for themselves. The conversation becomes about convincing rather than understanding. No one intends for that to happen. It's simply easy to fall back into the habits we've spent years developing. Language plays an equally important role.
Think about the difference between saying, "My client will never agree to that," and asking, "Can we talk about what's making this proposal difficult?" Both statements communicate that there's a problem. Only one invites everyone to solve it together.
Collaborative Practice isn't about avoiding disagreement. Healthy disagreement is often where the best solutions emerge. The difference is whether our language opens the door to further conversation or quietly closes it.
Perhaps that's the greatest challenge, and the greatest opportunity, of Collaborative Practice.
Success isn't determined by how much we know about the law, finances, or family dynamics. Those things matter, of course, but the process also asks something more of us. It asks us to become aware of our own habits. To notice when we're reacting instead of listening. To recognize when certainty has replaced curiosity. To ask ourselves whether we're protecting our client's interests while also protecting the integrity of the process.
None of us gets this right every time. Even the most experienced Collaborative Professionals interrupt. Make assumptions. Say things they wish they had phrased differently. The goal isn't perfection. The goal is awareness.
Every meeting gives us another opportunity to choose curiosity over certainty, conversation over position, and collaboration over habit. Those choices may seem small in the moment. Over the life of a matter, and over the course of a career, they're often what make the difference between simply practicing Collaborative law and truly embodying the Collaborative mindset.
