the concept of a contract has been at the center of law and justice throughout the ages each one of us enters into a contract multiple times during our life time every time we get married divorced sign up for a loan enter into a business partnership or a game and authorize a medical procedure in this edition of pro se nation we're going to look at a radically different mindset  my guest today is linda alvarez an attorney business consultant and author of discovering agreement this alvarez has dedicated the last two decades to transforming the approach to justice in america today from adversarial to cooperative she envisions a world in which conflict is an invitation to co create a better world for everyone and a legal system that inspires and supports sustainable beneficial and regenerative behaviors relationships and her prizes please welcome thank you happy to be here so glad you can join m actually begin with a little bit about your journey now you were in an entirely different field in at the beginning of your career and came into law a little bit later and now you're really you know on the cutting edge you're going to hold a new direction and trying to bring the rest of the legal field with you so could you tell me a little bit about the wow that is a big story yes my early career my first career was in theater i was in first acting and performing and then in productions so i came out of that interested in the copyright issues and the things that had to do with the arts and my husband had become a writer and i was thinking somebody needed a job so i started law school actually almost on a dare from my father who were interested yes  and i got to law school and pretty quickly realised i had never met a lawyer before i started law school quickly realised that this was not a place that i really belong didn't my personality didn't fit the whole way they judged and worked things didn't fit but i had taken out student loans so i had to finish and i shouted into a contract exactly where i was  i was good at it i actually am quite good at logic and all of the things that were required and began a very successful career that was accompanied by a constant feeling of anxiety so i was that related to just the dissonance between what was required of me and my job and what was true about me as a person and so i was there was this constant low grade anxiety where i just hated my work and but i was good at it and i had the student loans and i was supporting the family and we just you know it was i was doing the job well and then nine eleven happened and i thought about how i had to make myself go to the office every day and i wondered about all those people who maybe made themselves go to work that day and in combination with that as a result of how it seems a military response to nine eleven was creating more problems than it was solving you know wasn't leading to peace right i began a study of nonviolen because i knew that hitler was contemporary with gandhi and i wanted to know what gandhi had to say about hitler and about the real need for response to serious injustice and haros and to be nonviolent as well you know so that set me on a path of studying nonviolence and so then i found myself living a two track life so in my job i was all about the coercion and the dominance which is a form of violence and it my personal life it was all about compassion and empathy and understanding in peacemaking and coming together and having a powerful but nonviolent and healing response to conflict and that continued until one day i found myself driving to work wishing i could be in an automobile accident and the next thing i thought was i can wish for something better than that and that was when actually i i thought i was leaving the law i quit my job and i took another job with a poet and an author named john a donahue as his business manager and i worked for him thinking great this is it spiritual it's going to be so great we're going to have so much fun and six months after i began working with him he passed away suddenly in his sleep  and in the aftermath of sudden death for which we are unprepared there was a lot of sort of wrangling and behavior especially where john had informal business relationships and arrangements and so i began first with my conditioned responses as his business manager you know the outrage and the ugly letters and that was just escalating problems and it was destroying relationships and i knew that these relationships were as important to the family as the rights were and i had to find a way to preserve the relationships and powerfully protect the rights when i s powerful is like be effective and it was in that crucible that i realized the place to start was to remind the other parties of what we had in common and what was truly important to us  and out of that developed discovering agreement a way of actually framing the conversation around contract formation and then changing how we draft the contracts so that the relationship isn't adversarial going forward perfect what a great opportunity for you and the fact that you were embraced that opportunity right i mean it could have been disastrous it could have been ugly it could've as you said destroyed so many relationships and what a what an amazing opportunity actually right will it was a lovely way to bring together and finally we've together those two separate tracks understanding how the system worked and how it related to what was going on and also understanding how to have a nonviolent powerful response that brought healing and regeneration and creativity into the world rather than destructive us i love what you said you've written finding ways to join forces with others and together designing sustainable beneficial enjoyable relationships and to prizes is better than approaching deal making as an encounter between opposing forces seeking to win an advantage one over the other right we do this in i mean it's happening in video games it's happening it happens in sports it happens it happens in so many areas of life this winter loser paradigm and  do you think it's shifting and what is the work we need to do to get there i think it is shifting it's a cultural change we have always seen and this comes out of you know from our historic jousting in the wind lose obviously you know and the system was created to serve that win lose mentality and we grew up you and i in most people in a hierarch situation where power meant dominance or you know that's what you had to have dominance in order to have power since the early ninety's right when the internet impacted culture in a whole new way our emerging business leaders now and the culture that's emerging as our youth grows into adulthood is a much more collaborative culture because they understand that for them it's normal that every voice is heard right it's normal that they can create something by crowdsourcing not by owning they understand that access can be more important than ownership of something and so there's a shift in the mindset that's happening and part of the beauty of this discovery in agreement way of doing contracts which is sometimes called values based contracts and sometimes called conscious contracts the beauty of it is that it serves the needs of business that is understanding the role of business differently right and understanding the meaning of wealth differently so can you give an example of this at work again the old model and the model that you're in visioning well i can give you an example of how it operates when i have a client  so i'll have a client who wants to do some kind of agreement say it's a publishing agreement or some kind of thing like that i start with why and then when i say i start with why i start with the big why like why are you doing the work you do what is the better world you can see that doing this work helps bring into being rape and once i understand that about the client and the client understands that about themselves they have said i envision a world where something is different than it is now and that's why i write my books or that's why i do this work or that i make these widgets then i say why you joining forces with this party rather than some other party or doing it yourself or what is it about this party is important and what is it precisely that you're in service of your vision you're doing you're joining forces to do  we clear on that and then i exact say let's talk about what your values are that you want to live and work in accordance with what are the keys to satisfaction in a working relationship and what are the ways people ought to treat each other  you and once we have all of that and my client knows that about themselves then i say great let's look at the contract and we ask tell the other party this is our understanding of why we're entering this contract why are you entering it right so we're shifting the conversation we don't start with the deal points we don't begin with viewpoints we also don't say we're going to do this differently you're going to love it you know just do it differently and by opening a conversation about what really matters first we explore and calibrate the alignment of the parties whether this is a relationship they actually want to be in right right and then we talk about how would they like to have their conversations in moments of crisis or disagreement what would they like for their conversations to look like and what would be important things for them to have available for having those conversations together and we put that stuff in the contract so that the parties then have their own system right so basically we understand the contract as the private law of the parties and the the law is an axiom the contract is the private law of the parties and as long as it doesn't conflict with the larger legal system the legal system will enforce the parties private law what we don't realize is how much leeway the parties have to create their own governance and justice system in their contract and to retain their power over what happens to them as a result of what they've written in their contract so normally right we write the contract we sign the contract and our power is poured into that document and locked there and the only one that can unlock it and wield it is the court right but if you've written a contract where you have your own system for meeting conflict between yourselves and you make it a condition that you do this system that we've created before you are allowed to go to court contractually binding term then you have created a way that you the parties have can retain the power of self determination and you interpret your contract and you talk about not only using that touchstone of why we're here what were we shooting for where do we find ourselves how do we get back on track what would we like to have happen next and so you're facilitated by lawyers so that the contract itself as written will interface with the larger system and not be subverted but the parties retain the power and that's what i think is key  what do you do in a situation where you know the other party brings an attorney brings in an attorney that doesn't want to work this way and is more maybe it's more fear based because i think a lot of contracts actually are entered into with a kind of fear based mentality right how do i protect myself and my property and whether it's intellectual physical whatever from being in from being you know whatever how do you have you had any stranger variances absent and how do you navigate that well the beauty of it is that because we're having a different we enter the conversation differently than crime the other party is presented with a different array of choices right so we ask them why they tell us nothing they don't respond you know what vision what is your mission what are your values if they give us nothing we research them we research them and we write into the contract what we think is our best guess and we say this is our best guess of what yours is and you know people don't like to be misunderstood right and they'll correct you ok so we open we find ways to open that conversation and even if these terms never get into the actual document my client has had a different level of conversation with that other party and they have learned more about who that party is and how that party operates and if that party is determined and dedicated to a fear based scarcity mindset so they're making a clear and informed decision about whether to go ahead and enter that relationship and they know something about the kind of party that they're entering the relationship with so they may decide to go ahead and go forward with it but they know something that they didn't know right before and it's clear and i have had a situation where well oftentimes the other lawyer will say well this makes the contract too hard to interpret so we'll talk about the fact that it's never the court that has to interpret that stuff it's the parties who wrote it because they've written what's important to them they've written how they're going to have their conversation about bringing themselves back into alignment with what's important to them and it's they who are having that conversation not the court the court doesn't have to apply it if they end up in court it's because this they chose not to use this it's not working they were hell bent on the hell of litigation and please don't let me take your hell away from you go right ahead right you know but they've had the insight they would be especially valuable are i mean valuable in so many areas but especially in business partnerships where people you know i think are oftentimes focused on i don't know the widget that they're creating the service that they're creating and they're like yeah we you know we should get our energies together and do this but then but in a sense they don't really know each other right so it's almost like a pre it i've had to really find out if the two parties are actually resonating early rared and i imagine i mean you know i can't know what everybody's doing because you know everybody but it's fairly rare because that is not what we're trained to do as lawyers as lawyers we're taught that we represent our client against the other party in a contractual negotiation so what i'm saying is let's step back and let's reframe what it is we want the contract to do for us  you know do we want it to be a weapons cache or do we wanted to be a handbook for an agile resilient relationship right ok and if we frame what we want the contract to do for us then we are no longer framing the relationship as adversarial we're no longer negotiating to terms will concede to trying to compete to win advantage one over the other and then we don't end up with a document where us if something in the marketplace changes hello can you say disruptive marketplace right there's constant disruption with technology these days suddenly the plan doesn't make any sense anymore would you rather be arguing about how the court's going to interpret the contract or would you rather be solving the problem together so we're writing a contract that helps you solve the problem together and address what needs to be addressed because you already know what really matters you have your criteria  design specs right and you can look at the problem as a bug and the solution that you create together as your bug fix is a very different way to approach what happens in the face of disruption in business and it's attractive to business because it does make them more agile instead of spending all their time and treasure arguing over how do and how will the language of the contract impact our reality they have the power to decide that themselves what one for i use would you give to like your advice on a couple of things one is for the average person who maybe is thinking about going it alone going pro se and they want to write a contract with whether it be you know a business partner a friend purchasing something what should they keep in mind i think start with  y ok because if you know what it is that's the the touchstone for you why am i doing this right what is it precisely that i want to do so that's a vision i envision a world  where this is my life vision this is my mission here of this whatever this transaction is i'm doing is for this purpose and it's in service of my vision and these are my key values then if you have that for yourself when somebody makes a proposal you don't have to wonder is that a fair proposal is that what everybody else does in their proposals is that you can just say does that proposal align with my vision  my values does that purpose that proposal serve the vision i want to serve and is it in line with the mission i have so you're not looking at the other party as your enemy right you're just looking at what they're saying and does that align with mine so that makes things a lot simpler for decision making then for forming the relationship talk about and set out how you would like to have conversations if something happens and somebody is not happy anymore right right right just say neither one of us wants to go to court neither one of us can afford that how can we set up i'm i'm happy who do i call right what information do i need to say for your where do we meet and what questions will we ask ourselves in order to have our conversation and if you have those two things in place where everybody knows what really matters to each other right in life in this relationship in this transaction and if if we have our steps then deal points are just an action plan and an action plan can be updated what i've learned as a writer and video producer really trying to think through every contingency i mean every possible it's like i think even now i would enter into agreements formal agreements with family members because we're friends because you know you kind of think it first oh well you know we're friends it's called whatever but the thing is if it's the more explicit and i think certainly what you're saying to make sure that all parties both parties are all parties involved are really on the same page of emotionally intellectually big get it they get the communication it's not even that they have to be on the same page it's that they have to know what page each other is all right because what happens is surprise somebody does a behavior and the other person says that must mean right and they've completely misinterpreted what was behind that behavior whereas if you have at the beginning an understanding of meaning of why we're here and what we really value you can say wow you know when you did that it doesn't really jive with what i understand is meaning for you and important to you help me understand better and again you're having a conversation about alignment not about you've done something wrong in your bad person right which creates defensiveness which escalates conflict i did want to ask you i asked many of my guests what do you love about what you're doing whoa what i love about what i'm doing what i love about what i'm doing is the change that actually happens is the fact that the first time a client tries this kind of contract conversation formation drafting and then accountability to themselves and this time we bring it to a party who's never even imagined it then they want to do it that way always and so it begins to spread you know like a ripple effect because they say we can do this and our other contracts and in a sense we're removing from the litigation system a lot of conversations that really don't need to be there there are conversations that need to be there the belong in litigation because you need to take protective action to prevent harm but a lot of these conversations that get into the litigation system really don't belong there the people could have done this themselves you know they could have had the conversation healed the relationship or transformed the relationship in a way that works for everyone and off they go being productive without having destroyed anything and the courts are clogged up you know so for me it's very rewarding and what's also rewarding is that there's support in the american bar association as well because y so that's out there for lawyers to learn and for clients to learn so i'm just all about change thank you for the work you're doing my pleasure and you'll have to come back and visit prozac nation