Is this going to become an annual invitation? If so I willingly accept. It is so exciting to be back on a collaborative law platform almost a year to the day when I was involved in the launch of the Central London Collaborative Law Forum at the foundling Hospital. I wish you had issued shares in Collaborative Law Ltd and I had bought some. The speed and scale of its success as a movement would have provided some much needed relief from the relentless gloom emanating from the city. It would by now be time to consider a flotation!
There are now over 1,250 family lawyers who have completed their collaborative training in England and Wales, 300 of these are in London. This shows how universally acclaimed and supported it has been. I gather the number of those waiting for training new recruits is now over 250 and the queue continues to grow. Importantly some of the old household name, die hard practitioners have embraced the system too so its appeal and acceptance is universal. Without them it is doomed to failure, with them it is supported at the highest level. It is very exciting and represents a real innovation in the way this work is done. But much more importantly it represents a complete change in cultural approach and that is not easily achieved.
We lawyers are by nature and training adversarial and sometimes aggressive. In a way that is inevitable. When a client comes to see us they want support and want to be told they will come out alright, indeed that they will win. That is the way we were all trained and that is, in a way, what the clients set us up to be able achieve. Even with the Resolution code of conduct, winning is all.
This new approach requires a whole new re-education of ourselves and our mind set. It is a challenge but a most rewarding one I suggest.
Let no one be in any doubt, separation and divorce is always horrendously stressful. Some say it is worse than the death of a spouse. That will always be. But to help parties come through these times with the minimum of further distress generated by the process itself is I suggest hugely rewarding and a great deal more worthwhile than battering the other side into submission or fighting to conclusion. It is of course also so much more beneficial where there are children to be considered.
So I applaud your efforts and support your aims and targets. Indeed, all family judges, at all levels, do.
And tonight to show that I am not just all talk, I want to announce a new innovation.
As you know I am always on the lookout for a new design or invention to streamline the court process. This one is designed to provide a new and further incentive to parties to use the collaborative process and negotiate constructively.
It is also to demonstrate the Family Division’s commitment to the process.
During the summer my clerk was rather cheekily rung up by one of your number to ask whether they could come in front of me as the urgent applications judge to obtain approval to a set of orders which had been negotiated by the new scheme. That is, of course, an abuse of the urgent applications list in normal circumstances. But there was urgency because one of the parties had to leave the jurisdiction within days. However, I am, as is well known, a pussycat, and agreed to hear the application for approval as the first in the list on the following day.
However, on further reflection before the hearing, it occurred to me that this jumping of the queue should be encouraged in the right case and so, having spoken to the President to obtain his approval, I delivered a short judgment sanctioning this new queue jumping procedure.
I now have the finalised version (also approved by the President) which I am going to read to you in full, (It is very short. You are lucky I am not one of my more prolix brethren or we would be here till next week).
It is called S.vP
1. “This application for consent orders comes before me by an unusual route. The parties, who I do not need to identify, have negotiated a comprehensive settlement of all the issues that arise on their separation through the Collaborative Law Process. This process, as those of us who work in this field know, is becoming increasingly popular as a means of resolving difficult and sensitive family disputes arising on separation.
2. The result of the settlement is that before me today have been placed two documents entitled, “Minutes of agreement for consent order reached through the Collaborative Family Law Process”. They are set out over a number of pages a comprehensive arrangement covering all possible issues between the parties relating to the mother, the father and the children. I should say this is a couple who have never married but have two children, one aged 5 and another aged just over 3.
3. So they have reached this agreement, and it is now contained in two documents, one dealing with the finances and the other dealing with the arrangements for the children which will involve, in this particular case, the mother leaving the jurisdiction to take up residence in the United States of America with the children.
4. The agreed documents in many ways have more of the character of an American style agreement which is now quite familiar to this jurisdiction. The documents set out, in a great deal more detail, than normal matters which the parties have put their minds to over the period of the negotiation. I am told by those who appear for the mother and father this morning (the solicitors who assisted them in this process) that this negotiation has gone on over a series of meetings in the period since February of this year. I have had no difficulty in approving both the form and content of the orders and they will be drawn in the form in which they have been lodged.
5. The purpose of my making these few remarks this morning is to give such encouragement as the court can to this collaborative process. Accordingly, I have permitted the application for approval to be dealt with in the urgent without notice applications list, as this considerably shortcuts the normal rather lengthier process of lodging consent orders through the Principal Registry and waiting for them to be approved and sent back. Whilst I cannot bind the court always to allow this shortcut process to be available, I have discussed this suggestion with the President and he has given his approval to this shortcut process being used by those who achieve Collaborative Law Agreements in this way. He has approved this in order to provide as much encouragement as possible to people to resolve their difficulties in this civilised and sensible way. Obviously, if this gives rise to a flood of such applications which puts pressure on the listing in other ways, it may be necessary to revisit this facility. However, for my own part I think every conceivable encouragement should be given to parties to negotiate by this method. I have no doubt at all that the prospect that they can obtain finalised court documentation speedily once they have reached agreement, is an incentive to them to knuckle down and negotiate to an agreed conclusion.
6. So, as I say, the court will usually be prepared to entertain applications of this kind in the ex parte applications list before the applications judge of the day on short notice. A full days notice must be given to the Clerk of the High Court Judge in front of whom it is proposed to list the case (there is one such judge allocated per week). Such notice may be given by telephone. The Clerk of the Rules should be informed that this is taking place. It is important to emphasise that such a course is subject to the consent of the urgent application Judge. It is only appropriate where every aspect of the documentation is agreed, the hearing is not expected to last more than 10 minutes and the documentation is lodged with the Judge the night before the hearing.
With those few words, I readily approve the orders.
So there you are, hot off the press. I hope you approve and that it will save you and your clients time and possibly money. I have a few copies here tonight for framing.
I would sound only one soft note of caution to this Collab law process and it is this. It is essential to be acutely sensitive to the process failing so that costs are not run up first by one process and then, after the train has hit the buffers, the old fashioned scheme. I have heard one or two suggestions that if the process is not brought swiftly to an end when it is failing it increases cost. But as I say it is only a note of caution.
But otherwise Well done, as you know I trumpet the need for and success of this process whenever and wherever I get the chance both in London and on the circuits where it is also firmly taking root.
Keep up the good work
Here is to another fruitful year.
Sir Paul Coleridge
