From the end of September 2013, I’m giving up legal practice as a solicitor. Instead, I’m going to concentrate on something I really love – family mediation. If you’d asked me even six months ago if I would do such a thing, I would have said no. I only set up my own practice in December 2012. I came to law later than most via the retail industry and trade unionism. It was a struggle at times. I had to go to night school before I could study for my degree, and once I’d finished my training I had three separate periods of unemployment over the following ten years. The thought of giving up something I’ve worked hard to achieve hasn’t been easy.
Since I got my first job as a solicitor, I’ve felt like a square peg in a round hole ever since. I’d always worked well as part of a group. What I found , though, is that law practices tend not to be teams, but are more likely to be groups of individual fiefdoms. There was no leaders, but many competing and conflicting individuals. It always struck me as ironic that invariably, at interviews, I was asked the rather hackneyed question of whether I was a team player or not. Yet after starting a new job I began to find that I was, but few of my colleagues were.
It’s this apparent lack of a “teaming gene” among many of my colleagues family law which is the main reason behind me abandoning my practise as a solicitor and embracing mediation instead. It might almost sound contradictory: moving from a profession where I am working with other family lawyers in order to help people, to a profession which is generally thought of as a solo affair. But it’s not contradictory at all. I trained in collaborative practice in 2005..The core of the training is, not surprisingly, about collaborating with other lawyers and other professionals to help couples through their relationship breakdowns in a positive way. It is clearly a great process for clients. Yet while over 1,500 family lawyers have also trained in CP since 2003, virtually nobody is doing any collaborative work.
For nearly eight years I’ve worked successfully as a purely non-adversarial lawyer – my only visits to court were as a mediator when I took part in the in-court mediation service. But it hasn’t got any easier over the years to work like this, even though many, many experienced family lawyers will have been taught the value a non-combative approach can have on participants and their children. As a mediator, I simply don’t have the problem of hoping beyond hope that any other professional I choose to work with will be supportive of a client-focused approach. I know that they will be.
I’ll now always be part of a team – my mediation clients are members of the team, as are any other mediator or neutral financial or relationship expert I work alongside. It’s taken me nearly 30 years of exams, training and practise to find out the hard way, but the tools I was equipped with to do a particular job, weren’t the tools I needed. Relationship breakdown and intimate partner separation are mainly social issues, often with a great deal of financial worry. Unless individuals need the court’s protection for themselves, their children or their property – in which case the court process is essential – I believe family mediation will look after their needs better.
For the first time in 34 years, I am really looking forward to the rest of my working life.