Because the collaborative lawyers have a completely different state of mind about what their job is than traditional lawyers generally bring to their work. Instead of being dedicated to getting the largest possible piece of the pie for their own client, no matter the human or financial cost, collaborative lawyers are dedicated to helping their clients achieve their highest intentions for themselves in their post-divorce restructured families. Collaborative lawyers do not act as a hired guns. Nor do they take advantage of mistakes inadvertently made by the other side. Nor do they threaten, or insult, or focus on the negative either in their own clients or on the other side.
Collaborative lawyers trust one another.
They still owe a primary allegiance and duty to their own clients, within all mandates of professional responsibility, but they know that the only way they can serve the true best interests of their clients is to behave with, and demand, the highest integrity from themselves, their clients, and the other participants in the collaborative process. Collaborative Law offers a greater potential for creative problem-solving than does either mediation or litigation, in that only Collaborative Law puts two lawyers in the same room pulling in the same direction to solve the same list of problems. Lawyers excel at solving problems, but in conventional litigation they pull in opposite directions. No matter how good a lawyer I am for my own client, I cannot succeed as a Collaborative Lawyer unless I also can find solutions to the other party's problems that my client finds satisfactory. This is the special characteristic of Collaborative Law that is found in no other dispute resolution process.