I am on a listserv with many other collaboratively trained professionals and the recent discussion about advocacy as applied during collaborative cases really struck me as significant.  One of the participants eloquently described litigation as “a game of one upmanship and winning at all costs.”  While this is, stereotypically, the mindset of many litigators, an advocacy that is predicated on there being a winner and a loser is not what I want to participate in, collaborative process or not.

The discussion went on to describe advocacy in different ways:

1. What happens when conflict is high and tempers flare? Advocacy in that moment may be disengaging and taking a break.

2. What if the client is so shaky that they cannot tolerate their lawyer’s empathetic voice directed toward their spouse? Advocacy to support the client to be heard may be the best choice in that moment or perhaps that collaboration.

3. Advocacy might be supporting the client and preparing carefully between meetings and silently witnessing at part or all of a combined meeting.

Advocacy, whether in or outside of the formal collaborative process, is a fluid concept, adaptable to individual people and individual cases.  This is a hat that we can all wear with pride because at the end of the day, there isn’t one winner and one loser, but we can seek to find the win-win-win solution.

Abigail