Law Times

Page 8 June 22, 2015 • Law Times www.lawtimesnews.com ALT Divorce New model combines free info, diverse professionals By yaMri Taddese Law Times amily lawyer Nathalie Picard says family law is "80 per cent emotion and 20 per cent law." Overlooking that fact is part of the reason the tra- ditional model of service deliv- ery " just doesn't work," she says. "It's very expensive, it's long, and we don't deal with emotion." Along with Julie Audet, Picard heads ALT Divorce, an Ottawa-based family law centre. The centre uses other profes- sionals, such as family consul- tants and mental-health profes- sionals, to make the family law process "less painful, less expen- sive, faster, and also more family friendly," according to Picard. Before clients walk in the door, the centre encourages them to visit Family Law in a Box, an online information centre that aggregates all available informa- tion to members of the public on everything they need to know about separation in Ontario. Family Law in a Box, the brainchild of Audet and a third lawyer, Josée Thibault, offers the aggregated information for free. And for a $95 monthly subscrip- tion, users can get a much more detailed navigation of the information via video in- structions. "We systemized every- thing we possibly could, including getting the ser- vices from Family Law in a Box to the client be- fore even entering in our door," says Audet. Thibault says a person- al experience encouraged her to create a service like Family Law in a Box. "The reason why Julie and I started the business is because I went through a separation myself and one of the big issues that I had was trying to find in- formation," she says. The online informa- tion informs clients on matters such as how to prepare a financial state- ment and calculate child support, says Picard. If users are also clients of ALT Divorce, their subscription to Family Law in a Box could last six months to a year. The lawyers say they encourage cli- ents to watch the videos with a friend to account for emotions that may taint the information they're receiving. Once clients come to ALT Divorce, the first person they meet with is a family consultant who will speak to both parties separately. The consultant "deals with emotions" and prepares the parties for mediation, says Picard. One of the most impor- tant roles of the consultant is also to "screen for power imbalance," something that will be helpful later on in mediation, says Picard. Later, a paralegal or law clerk will do a presentation with the parties recapping and explain- ing the information they've al- ready obtained on the Family Law in a Box web site. "The key also is to make sure that every service, every hour, and every minute the cli- ent spends with us, they're spent with the best person to address their needs at the least possible cost," says Audet. "The lawyer touches the file when everything basically has been sorted out but for the finan- cial piece," she adds. "Even then, everything has been laid out on the table, has been prepared by our paralegal or legal assistants. The lawyer sits and is the most ef- fective possible with the time that he or she bills to the client be- cause everything has been done by other people up to the end." A psychiatrist does the par- enting portion of the mediation, says Audet, leaving just finan- cial mediation in the hands of the lawyers. Since they started their ser- vices in January, clients have been happy, says Audet. "We're giving them the con- trol over their situation by giv- ing them the tools they need to allow them to do as much as possible before it's time to meet with the lawyer." Depending on the complex- ity of the matter, the whole pro- cess could be over in a span of a month or two, says Picard. The team, which has four centres in Ottawa, says there are plans to expand services to other cities in Ontario. The model is also "easily transportable" to oth- er parts of the country, they say. Part of the challenge for their model is convincing peo- ple that mediation isn't just for separating couples who are on friendly terms, says Picard, noting high- conf lict matters can also be amenable to mediation. "When you have a mental- health professional who intervenes from the be- ginning . . . you can take measures to make sure that the conf lict is going to be contained and then it becomes a file that can be mediated when other- wise people wouldn't have been open to that," notes Audet. A multidisciplinary approach to family law isn't new, of course. Ac- cording to Nicola Savin, chairwoman of Collab- orative Practice Toronto, there are some 500 collab- orative family law practitioners in Ontario. These practitioners include both mental-health and financial experts in their family law practice depending on the needs of each case. "It's really starting to become more popu- lar," says Savin, noting collab- orative practitioners have been around for more than 10 years. While it's positive that more lawyers are seeing the benefits of involving other experts, Savin says she's a bit suspicious as to why these new practices don't simply adopt the collaborative law model in its entirety instead of coming up with their own approaches. Some of them are "in my view co-opting collaborative family law principles and just taking parts of the process that they like and discarding others that we consider are fairly essen- tial," says Savin. One of those essential com- ponents is a disqualification clause that says lawyers involved in mediation can't litigate the matter should the mediation break down. That allows parties to speak openly at mediation, according to Savin. Should the mediation fail, cross-examining one of the parties would feel like "a betrayal," she adds. At ALT Divorce, the lawyers say they don't litigate matters they've mediated. In fact, they rarely have to consider that sce- nario since mediation is success- ful in 95 per cent of cases, they say. Picard says she and her col- leagues chose to create a new model to combine "the best ele- ments" of the alternative dispute resolution process, including col- laborative practice, with methods they've developed in their other businesses over the years. LT Depending on the complexity of the matter, the whole process could be over in a month or two, says Nathalie Picard. FocuS on Family Law F Essential Tools for Family Law Professionals For more information, visit www.divorcemate.com 1.800.653.0925 x407 | sales@divorcemate.com NOW AVAILABLE! ADD FREEDOM & FLEXIBILITY TO YOUR PRACTICE DM Tools Cloud Work anywhere, anytime, on any device. For child and spousal support calculations. Available for PC, Mac, tablets and smartphones. Untitled-8 1 2015-02-17 12:05 PM

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