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. What if my partner and I can reach agreement on almost everything, but there is one point on which we are stuck. We do this with important limitations and safeguards built in, so that the integrity of the Collaborative Law process is not undermined. Everyone must agree that the good faith atmosphere of the Collaborative Law process would not be damaged by submitting the issue for third party decision, and everyone must agree on the issue and on who will be the decisionmaker.