Camille Milner appeared as a guest on the podcast run by John Susko, a Florida-based Collaborative and Mediation focused attorney. John interviews Camille regarding the reasons she embraces Collaborative Divorce and how she has actively participated in the Collaborative Divorce professional community at large over her career.
Part 1
Transcript:
John Susko:
This is John Susko with a person from the Texas community that’s both a board-certified attorney, and also a collaborative divorce attorney. Her name is Camille Milner, and she is going to discuss some of the issues involved with the collaborative process. Welcome, Camille.
Camille Milner:
Thank you, John. It’s nice to be here. I grew up in Denton, and really always knew I wanted to be a lawyer. But first went into personal injury and workers’ compensation because I had had a great grandfather who had died of a workers’ comp injury, and so that was an interest that I had. But before long, when I got back from law school, it became apparent that there was a need for women who took care of families. They have a little bit different perspective and a little bit different touch. And some of the guys here in town that were board-certified lawyers that I was friends with started sending me clients. And frankly, it was the clients that weren’t willing to leave their emotions outside the door.
Camille Milner:
And they got a little worn out dealing with them, and they knew that I had patience with those type folks and was open to helping them. And so, I would plug those clients with one of my local friends of the counselor or psychology groups, and they’d help them to get in good enough shape emotionally that we could do some of the legal work. And then we’d do some more of the counseling, and do some of the legal work. And before long, I had a full-time family law practice.
Camille Milner:
The problem with the family law practice, at that time, back in my day when I was in law school, we didn’t even have mediation. It was something after I graduated from law school because I’m so old. But then, when I was in family practice, what the predominant model was, was litigation, and you went to court.
Camille Milner:
And while I, as a lawyer, enjoyed doing that… because that’s what we were trained to do, we were trained at the University of Texas Law School to be warriors… it was an internal dissonance, because I knew in my heart while I was succeeding in the courtroom, I was damaging and sometimes destroying a family. Not to mention, the incredible cost of litigation.
Camille Milner:
So when collaborative finally came along, and I’ll talk about what I know about the history of that in just a minute, it just was like a kid glove that had been a pattern designed, and cut, and sewn just for me. It was a perfect fit for me that included all the disciplines, and I finally felt like we could keep families out of the courtroom in a better venue to restructure the family than court could ever be.
Camille Milner:
There are a few cases that litigation is still necessary when you’ve got extreme personality disorders, or domestic violence, or addiction. Although to some extent, those are being handled in collaborative process, but there are still some that need to go to court. And so, we still need good litigators. But what we need to do is really enhance our skills and hone our skills so that we’re all able to screen and best serve the clients with what their needs are.
John Susko:
Tell our audience, what is collaborative? I have a difficult time capsulizing it because I just think it’s so common sense that coming up with a great slogan, or a catchphrase or whatever, it’s somewhat difficult for me. But tell me what your definition of a collaborative process is.
Camille Milner:
Everyone pretty much knows what litigation is, or the justice system. That’s going in front of a judge and letting the judge decide how to quote unquote, “divide the baby”. The collaborative process deals with all the aspects of a divorce. So there’s a financial professional at the end of the table who helps the clients. Some of them have never budgeted, and helps them do a post-divorce budget so they know what they’re going to be working with in terms of their monthly income and outgo expenses.
Camille Milner:
And helps them do a complete inventory and appraisement of all that they own, and all that they owe, so that they can evaluate what the values of everything they own is, and come to hopefully an agreement on what the values are so they know really, they can put a pencil down on the paper about what their estate is. And that’s what the financial person does, is help them pinpoint what those two documents should look like. And then through the process, help them develop options that will meet their goals and interests financially. And in other ways besides just financial.
Camille Milner:
Then, as I said earlier, we have a neutral mental health professional. When there is children, that person meets with each party individually, and sometimes together, to develop what will be their co-parenting plan going forward. When will they see the children? How will the children’s expenses be divided up? Where will the children primarily live, go to school? All those typical questions.
Camille Milner:
And the way I think about this is, unlike in litigation where it really is just about cutting the estate in half, or dividing the child and the child’s time in a lot of ways, what we do in the collaborative process is take a blank, white board. And instead of trying to make this family fit into a peg of what… Square peg in a round hole, we develop their parenting plan and their property division around their family. Every single collaborative case is custom-made for that family, based on what their interests are and their goals.
Camille Milner:
And each of the lawyers that are representing a client are best served, and the clients are best served if they have been trained with a number of collaborative trainings, trained in mediation. And they’ve had some experience both shadowing cases and being a lawyer in cases, so that they can show and model for clients how to listen intently, how not to sit there and be planning your response, but listen to here.
Camille Milner:
So there’s a lot of quiet in the room. Sometimes it’s quiet, and lawyers can be very uncomfortable with that, and we have to learn how to let everybody be quiet for a minute if we’re all thinking about things. Lawyers always want to jump in. And so, it is called an alternative dispute resolution process. I like to think at some point we’ll get to where going to court is the alternative dispute resolution process.
Camille Milner:
And in fact, it already is, because I don’t know the exact statistics in Florida, but I think statistically around the country, 80 to 90% of cases settle, whether that’s in mediation, whether it’s in the collaborative process, or whether it’s just by informal settlement conferences. Usually I think only 5% of cases actually go to final hearing in court. So it really is the alternative dispute resolution process, and everything else is more the norm.
Camille Milner:
A lot of times people think that you have to completely trust each other to be able to be successful in a collaborative process, and I don’t subscribe to that philosophy. My philosophy is, if you hire a neutral financial professional that’s going to help you gather all the documents, and look through them, and assimilate them, and help you value… He doesn’t set the values, but he will help the clients determine values.
Camille Milner:
For example, if they have a house or a business, he’ll help them look at the options for valuing those such as with a business appraiser, or a market analysis on a house, or the tax rolls, for example. And so, he shows the clients different options that they can look at on how to value their property or their business, whatever piece of property it is they’re talking about.
Camille Milner:
And one way that, even though it looks on first impression that this might be more expensive than a court case, a case that is handled in litigation, truth be told, when you’re dealing with one neutral professional that you have confidence in, rather than having each side having their own high-cost, high-dollar financial professional, appraiser, or whatever it is in court, you can just imagine the savings in that.
Camille Milner:
And the same thing with the mental health professional. One trained mental health professional can work with the parents, or if they don’t have children just work with the clients on communication skills. And somehow those mental health professionals have so much of an understanding of psychological and emotional bases that people work from, that they’re able to help them come to an agreement on things, whether it’s time with the children, or the children’s expenses. Sometimes it’s adult children and what they’re going to do for holidays.
Camille Milner:
That with these two neutral professionals and trained lawyers in collaborative, we are able to help the families and couples begin the healing process well before the divorce is over. And sometimes, not unusually, they leave, and sometimes I’ve seen them kiss at the door when they go to their separate cars, or go to breakfast together, or leave hand in hand. We help them become more like distant relatives, but still relatives. They share common history. Sometimes they share blood, if they share children. And so, there’s no reason that they should be enemies. It’s just not necessary in most cases.
John Susko:
Let me ask you, what percentage of your cases are litigation cases, versus collaborative cases? I know that some lawyers have sworn off of litigation. Some lawyers don’t, being small practitioners. I understand, I have been a board-certified attorney myself. So tell me what your situation is now.
Camille Milner:
Well, like I’m sure everybody else you’ve talked to, it changes from day to day. In 2007, I was one of those that one of my colleagues in Austin challenged me to just say, “No more litigation.” And I did that, and was rocking along pretty well. And then 2008 came, and with the economy tanking, that changed the landscape of a lot of cases. And it became necessary to go back to taking some litigation, which I have continued to do.
Camille Milner:
It is not my favorite, but there are cases, like we said earlier, that requires litigation. And I also have an office mate that we work together on a lot of cases. He’s an incredible appellate lawyer, board-certified family lawyer, and criminal lawyer. And so, when we’ve got children’s protective service cases with abuse or neglect, or any protective orders with domestic violence, and his background in knowing all the criminal statutes, together we can really cover a lot of the areas that come up.
John Susko:
Tell me a little bit about the experience going forward from the Minnesota folks, the Stu Webb. Tell us a little bit about what you know about that process, and tell me a little bit what you believe collaborative law is, or the process is.
Camille Milner:
Well, Stu Webb is an attorney up in Minneapolis. Brilliant, brilliant man. And also very sensitive in terms of understanding that doing divorces is not just about dividing up the pots and pans, but it’s also a great deal about emotions and relationships. And he was so disgusted at one point, a little over 20 years ago, with the litigation system, and the justice system, and what effect it had on families, that he was about to quit practicing entirely.
Camille Milner:
He wrote a letter to one of his friends who was on the Supreme Court in Minnesota, and said, basically, “You’re going to think I’m touched in the head, but I had this idea.” And the Supreme Court justice came back to him and said, “Not only are you not touched in the head, but you are a visionary. And you have got to follow this, because this is going to change the world.”
Camille Milner:
So he said his first order of business was to find another lawyer in Minneapolis that would be willing to work on these cases with him. And from that became what was originally known as collaborative law. And that at that point was each client had a lawyer, and they did basically the collaborative process that we know today. But out in Arizona and California, where they’re much more open to the mental health professionals, they were developing something similar that they called collaborative divorce.
Camille Milner:
And when these two were talking about merging, there was some debate about what the proper practice protocols were, because the group in California used not only lawyers, but also mental health professionals who served as communications coaches, and financial professionals. And so, there was a lot of discussion about that back and forth. And I was very proud of what those two groups did, because they collaborated, if you want to call it that, and named the international organization the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals. So, the group that is the international group has called it for the last 20 years collaborative practice, which is the umbrella over collaborative divorce and collaborative law.
Camille Milner:
Now, it’s evolved. And in an evolutionary way that Texas played a role, our Texas lawyers went out to California to study what their system was. And they came back from California and said that particular system is heavier with the mental health professionals, each client had their own communications coach, and then there was a child specialist, and then there was the financial professional. And in Texas, it’s not that everybody wears cowboy boots, and cowboy hats, and rides horses, but there is a little bit of that mentality.
Camille Milner:
And what that mentality looks like is, they want to streamline it here. And so, one of our mental health professionals in Dallas, Linda Solomon, worked with one of our leaders in collaborative, Kevin Fuller, and they developed the neutral mental-health professional coach model, which has now become the predominant model around the country. And that is what I understand that Florida uses, too.
Camille Milner:
Some of our trainers from Texas went and trained a lot of the Florida group on that model. So that seems to be the predominant model. And eventually some of our trainers went to Minnesota and trained Stu Webb’s group in the neutral coach model. So, we’re proud to say that Texas has had a pretty substantial part in the evolution of the neutral coach model coming to the forefront of the practice. Not just in the United States, but around the world.
John Susko:
I’ve been involved with the Florida Academy of Collaborative Professionals for the last three or four years. I learned about collaborative in 2016 and became a jumping on the wagon kind of person. But I know that our organization has tried to model your credential situation. Tell me about that. You are a master credentialed collaborative person? What’s the label out there?
Camille Milner:
I’m a master credentialed collaborative professional. I’m not quite sure how many of us there are now. There’s the basic credentialed collaborative professional, and a master credentialed collaborative professional. And to qualify to be a basic… and that’s not the word that we use, it’s just a credentialed collaborative professional… you have to have completed 20 cases in the past three years, I believe. Or eight… No, 20 in your career, or eight in the last three years. It’s been several years since I applied for that, so I’m having a hard time remembering the specific criteria. And then to be a master credentialed collaborative professional, and you have to have successfully completed 50 collaborative cases. And there’s several of us that have been able to reach that milestone.
John Susko:
Let me ask you. In Florida, we have mandatory disclosures that have to be done in any litigated case. And I represent a lot of lower… Not lower, but people that are from the panhandle who aren’t rich.
Camille Milner:
More modest means clients.
John Susko:
More modest means, that’s the word, or the words. And I tell them that this process, we could avoid a lot of that process, and we could agree to not have to disclose. And we knock out the paper generation process. Is that part of what happens in Texas?
Camille Milner:
We have informal disclosure within the collaborative process, if that’s what you’re asking about. When they sign their participation agreement, they agree for full transparency and full disclosure, without the formality of court.
Camille Milner:
I think the way we do it, frankly, is even better than discovery. Because as we all know, if somebody wants to hide cash in the backyard and they’re going to lie about it, you may or may not find that out with a deposition, or written questions, or requests for production of documents. When we do the collaborative process, in the participation agreement, they agree to fully disclose and full transparency, and we put that in the participation agreement. And then we have that inventory that we talked about a few minutes ago that is on a spreadsheet that they both sign a sworn declaration that that is everything to the best of their knowledge.
Camille Milner:
And then we put it in the decree that says, to the best of their knowledge, everything has been disclosed on that inventory, which is not filed with the court. And if there’s anything found to have not been disclosed intentionally, it goes a hundred percent to the other side. Now, once in a while, you have somebody that you think might be thinking about not disclosing everything. But when they look at that penalty, if they are ever found out and they haven’t disclosed, I’ve seen the looks on their faces of, it’s a little bit chilling and they rethink what that earlier thought might’ve been.
Camille Milner:
And if I could go back, John, you asked a question, I gave a really long answer. But basically what the collaborative process offers is privacy, protection of the relationships, preserving the estate because they’re not spending everything they’ve got to fight over maybe two or 3% difference in court. And they have control of the process to the extent that they don’t have their schedules upset, particularly with doctors, and pilots, and people that have pretty tight schedules. They can schedule these meetings around that.
Camille Milner:
And we’re able to look at what are their goals, and what are their interests? And we drill down and find out, are there goals to be able to go to the children’s weddings, and graduations, and family reunions, and sometimes even funerals without having a lot of tension? Are there goals that they don’t want their family and friends to feel like they have to take sides? Are there goals that they want each one of the parties themselves to have financial security and stability?
Camille Milner:
Those are all very lofty goals that are rarely addressed, if ever, in court. But we address those in every single collaborative case. And with the modest means clients, one way that we can pare the expense down on this is, first of all, talk to them about a budget, and how important… One of our financial professionals here says, “People don’t hesitate to go and spend a certain amount, 20,000 or whatever on a car. Do they not think making sure that their children, and themselves, and their spouse are financially taken care of in the future, emotionally and financially taken care of in the future, isn’t it worth looking at it in terms of, “Well, you would spend that much on a car. Would you consider spending X amount, whatever it might be, less than that, or more than that, depending on the case, for the financial and emotional security of your family?””
Camille Milner:
And a lot of people when they put it in that perspective look at it differently. But even for the modest means couples and families, one of the ways that we can pare it down is if we don’t have the joint meetings, when both the neutrals are there, and the lawyers, and the clients. The clients can do a lot of the work offline with the individual neutrals, and they don’t sign anything that’s an agreement, and they just bring it back in concept to the lawyers and we all talk about it together. And sometimes we can finish the whole thing in two or three meetings when we do a lot of the work offline.
John Susko:
In the panhandle right now, the average is three meetings, and we’re finished.
Camille Milner:
That’s great.
John Susko:
Which is very good.
Outro:
This has been part one of a two-part series with Camille Milner, a Texas collaborative divorce attorney. Be sure to join us next time as John continues this conversation.
Outro:
John Susko is a Florida family law attorney.
Part 2
Transcript:
John Susko:
Let me talk about the atmosphere. You do the collaborative meeting in a lawyer’s office, or a mental health office. And how long are these meetings?
Camille Milner:
They’re two hours, typically. And the reason for that… everything we do in the collaborative process is very intentional. For example, my office is an office building, but it’s a two story brown brick building, and from the time you walk in, there’s flowers out front, and you walk in and it’s very comfortable. It’s almost like a house, but it’s also a professional building. And the reason for that is so many people go into this environment so stressed, that anything we can do to help lower their stress level and give them comfort is good for them, not just as a human being, but it also helps their ability to negotiate.
Camille Milner:
Because when people are panicked and fearful, they are not able to use the part of their brain that helps them think clearly, and so we want to make them comfortable in every way that we can. One of the things we do is if there’s a certain amount of tension when one of them comes into the office, we put one of them in a conference room, and then put the other one in a different conference room. But a practice tip is when the second one comes in, we want to let them know that the other party is not in with the team already, because we made that misstep once and somebody came in a little bit after… the second party came in after the first party, and they got very upset because they thought the other party was already in with the team rather than sequestered in a room all their own.
Camille Milner:
Typically here, we do have the meetings in a lawyer’s office simply because a lot of our mental health professionals and financial professionals have smaller offices. So we have, typically we have a conference room in the lawyer’s office, but I have converted what was my lawyer’s office, which was a bigger office than my little tiny closet of an office, into a collaborative room. And I see all my clients and do my collaborative cases and my mediations in there. And it’s got a couch that’s very comfortable in there, it’s very quiet. Sometimes we have essential is that are being diffused just to give a little bit of good feeling to the room.
Camille Milner:
We always have snacks, and we inquire with the lawyers and the clients about what their preference are for snacks. Sometimes people don’t want sweets, some people do. Some people like soft drinks, some people like coffee or tea or just water. Whatever it takes to make them comfortable, and there’s… I don’t know whether it’s primal or biblical, but there is a magic aspect to breaking bread together. Once you do that, people seem to let their guard down. And I don’t mean let their guard down and make them vulnerable, but let their guard down in an ability to negotiate, feel comfortable enough to negotiate.
Camille Milner:
One time we had some people that came in, and they were both pretty stressed, and neither one of them would touch the food, which was to the side of the table. And then slowly, one would go get a cookie, or go get a piece of fruit, and then in a few minutes, the other one would. And we began to see them begin to pull the walls down, and the negotiation got more comfortable, and was much more productive. And so those are just some examples of what we do in my office to make it very comfortable.
John Susko:
You mentioned mediation.
Camille Milner:
Yes.
John Susko:
Do you do mediation also? You’re a mediator?
Camille Milner:
Yes. Almost everybody in our collaborative group is, our local group, and most everybody in the collaborative group in the state has been trained in mediation. Because the skills that you learn in that really do enhance what you can do in collaborative cases.
John Susko:
You’re talking to the choir, because I was a mediator first back in the mid-80s, and I always thought I was going to become the [inaudible 00:04:37] Susco of Florida mediation, but it was before its time. But tell me a little bit of some of the cases that you have had. You’ve got some cases that stood out, we spoke about them last week. Tell me a little bit about some of the cases without naming names, but tell me what the magic is that goes forward.
Camille Milner:
One of my favorites is the gray divorce, and what had happened on that was my husband, who was on the executive board of our Dallas PBS station called KERA, enabled me to be on the program Think with Kris Boyd, who is sometimes nationally known now. Sometimes her program goes national broadcast. And I was able to talk for nearly an hour about collaborative law. I found out later that a personal injury lawyer had heard the broadcast, pulled his car over for 45 minutes to listen to it, and referred his step-mother to me. Not his father, but his step-mother, because he knew his step-mom and dad, who were a gray divorce obviously, were going to be going down that path, and she came to me and I told her a little bit about collaborative law, and gave her a book that our practice group wrote, and she took it to her spouse, and they both decided they wanted to do it collaboratively. He had already hired one of the litigators that doesn’t do collaborative law, and he let that lawyer go and hired one of the people around town that are both collaborative and litigation.
Camille Milner:
And it was just an incredible case, and this man was on our panel at the next spring conference for our state collaborative group, and he got pretty emotional when he said his first divorce had been litigation, and it had been so acrimonious, that his two very good children, one of whom was the one that heard this radio program, had ended up in boarding school, in military school, in fact. And that he and his ex-wife hadn’t really spoken until six weeks before her death, which really made him very sad. And he said so he knew the difference, and on his second divorce they ended up being friends, it was just a point in time where they were retiring, and they had different goals in life, and it ended very well.
Camille Milner:
So that’s one of my favorites, because this is a person that did go through both, and told about it quite emotionally. I had another one that I think with a lot of business owners, it was a small business owner, and he didn’t really want a business appraiser going into the offices because he had competitors. And he was afraid that the people that worked in his business would get panicked about why there was somebody nosing around in the business and tell the competitors that there was a divorce, or a business dissolution, or anything that might upset his reputation. And so we worked really hard to figure out how to do a business appraisal that wasn’t a full business appraisal, it was a little bit of a shorthand one, but it was enough to get what we needed to know. And his other fear was that it was going to be such a high appraisal that he wouldn’t be able to buy his spouse out.
Camille Milner:
And when it came back, it was lower than he expected. And so again, with cooperation, we were able to get the information, and it was a neutral business appraiser, he didn’t have an agenda. And so that one worked out, and they’ve both gone on to be very very successful happy people, and their kids are real successful.
Camille Milner:
Then I had one that the couple had a son who eventually developed a gaming addiction, which apparently happens quite frequently now, and he had to go to a rehab institution in a different state. And they had another child that was part of the time still at home, and then part of the time had left the home, but they were able to as a family go and spend the holiday with this child who was in the rehab, and their relationship was still so good that they were able to do that as a family, and I thought that was remarkable.
John Susko:
And they’ve continued to do it?
Camille Milner:
They’ve continued to do it, yeah. It’s really amazing. Then there was one other one that is one of my favorites that one of the parents determined after years of not wanting to face being gay, finally came to terms with the fact that they were going to need to follow that path in life, and their children were in just really bad shape, because the parents were so in pain. They still loved each other, but they weren’t going to be able to continue living together as husband and wife, and it was just a very difficult situation. In that case we had a child specialist that met with the children, because the children were in distress. And without putting pressure on the children, that child specialist was able to come and meet with the parents at one of our meetings, and explain to them that they were in such pain themselves that they weren’t able to really take care of the children and their pain.
Camille Milner:
And of course the parents just fell apart momentarily, because they hated that that had happened. But with the help of that child specialist, they were able to then remove themselves from being in such depths of pain, and take care of their children too. And their children came through it fine, and they came through it fine, and we were able to craft a perfect, customized arrangement. The mother was in grad school, and needed to be able to go to school, but she bought a house across the street from the children’s elementary school, so every afternoon the children came and stayed with her until bedtime, and she got them fed, and did their homework, and got them ready for bed. And then the dad, who worked in Dallas and got in late, would come and pick them up and take them to school the next morning, they’d spend the night at his house and he’d take them to school the next morning, and he didn’t have to be in super early when the mom had to be in school.
Camille Milner:
So it really was customized perfectly to what their family needed. And that’s why we think both the parents and the children were able to thrive, notwithstanding going in different directions as far as the family structure.
John Susko:
What do you say to people that come in and say that it’s… I think you may have addressed it earlier. The cost, and all the professionals. What do you say to them that makes it work? I’ve had lawyers come up to me and say they don’t want to get a mental health person, and from my perspective again, the mental health person is the glue, the communications expert is the glue. And I’ve seen it in mediation cases, but what do you say to these people that do the cost analysis, and somehow say it’s too costly?
Camille Milner:
Well, with clients we unpack it a little bit. We ask them the questions, is privacy important to you? And rather than putting a dollar value on it, when they say privacy is important to them and they start thinking about everybody in their town knowing what’s going on in their bedroom, which is what sometimes happens in court, all of a sudden privacy takes on a high value. The same thing with kids, what I used to say to people in litigation is “If I win your case, but your kid is a drug addict at 14 because of the conflict that continues between the parents, I don’t consider that a win.” So we unpack that a little bit. And then we talk about when you make the assessment, if you calculate the risk of going to court and having dueling experts on custody or on financial questions, this is almost always… well I would say collaborative is always cheaper than when you go to court with two experts in mental health questions, child custody questions, or in business appraisal questions.
Camille Milner:
Because that just runs the cost up, and then the lawyer’s cost on top of that. I don’t think people really… and frankly I don’t think lawyers that are doing litigation with them really break out what the range can be. It can be frightening.
John Susko:
I want to talk a little bit about… I got your Denton County Meet Your Interest book that I’ve given to about four or five clients in the last month and a half, and I’ve now got three collaborative cases, where before I had three years with no collaborative cases. So I’m very happy.
Camille Milner:
That’s amazing, it sounds like you need me to bring you some more books.
John Susko:
Yes, I do. And I’m trying to get our local lawyers to see that… I have had people say to me “Well, I settle most of my cases.”
Camille Milner:
Oh yeah.
John Susko:
And I say “Yeah, but you still have something hiding behind your back, and therefore I can’t trust you totally, nor can everybody.” How do you address that with other lawyers. And are all the lawyers in taxes… do most of the lawyers in taxes at least know about collaborative? I don’t think most of the lawyers in Florida, three years [inaudible 00:15:11] truly understand what collaborative is.
Camille Milner:
I think that’s a big problem. And one of the problems that we have had is some of the lawyers that aren’t trained in collaborative, and maybe don’t have an inclination to have an interest in it, they fear collaborative if it becomes successful, it’s going to impact their business negatively. There’s plenty of business to go around, and not everybody is a good fit for collaborative. But a lot of people, there’s a lot of people that are. Chip Rose was my very first trainer, and he I think put it best when he said “Yes, a lot of cases settle, but does anybody look at the quality of their settlement?” And I think that is the fundamental question. When I do mediations, and I do mediations but I don’t prefer them over collaborative, because in Texas our model, I think yours may be a little bit more progressive than ours is, but our model in Texas is still the caucus method.
Camille Milner:
The clients and their lawyers are in separate rooms, we’re there from 9:00 to 5:00, and you have to settle an entire case in that amount of time. Rarely does anybody go into a second day, and rarely do they do it in increments of two or three hours. Like we talked about before, lots of studies show that after two hours, people get really tired, and their decision making and their thought processes are not good. And I had a mediation many years ago that was with a very good friend of mine, and he had told me there was one thing that he did not want done, it had to do with the business. And at midnight, the mediator who was much more interested in having another notch on his belt of a successful mediation, said to my client “Who is in charge here? You, or little Camilley over there?”
Camille Milner:
And my client caved on that one point, the one that he had said “Never let me cave on.” And I of course had him sign something, because I knew he was going to wake up in a day and just be horrified, but he said “I just want this to stop.” And that was like 30 years ago, we don’t do them that way anymore, but even 9:00 to 5:00, people get exhausted.
John Susko:
I remember back when I was practicing in the 90’s, after about four hours, [inaudible 00:17:43] eight hour cases, I would say “I’ll pay for it, because I really don’t want to do this anymore, because it’s painful.”
Camille Milner:
Oh yeah, it is. It is, and the lawyers are tired, the clients are tired, I’m getting ready to do a mediation next week for some people, and one of the things I do as the mediator, which I think is if not unique, it’s rare, is I have spent a lot of time with each lawyer beforehand, and I have been really amazed, and continue to be amazed when I do mediations at our local mediation center, how lawyers come having very little preparation in the case. And there is just no way you’re going to get a quality settlement when all the work is attempted to be done in eight or nine hours. It simply cannot be done. You may be able to push this through the meat grinder, but you’re not going to come out with a very good product.
Camille Milner:
And in collaborative cases, we don’t start negotiating until we have all the information. We spend a lot of time on the information gathering, and then we evaluate that information to make sure that everybody agrees on what the information is before we go to negotiation. Because if the pieces are continually moving around like they are in mediation, it’s not going to end up being a quality settlement like it is in collaborative. And one of the things, I don’t know how much your mediations end up costing there, but if you figure that the lawyer’s got… a lawyer that is somewhat prepared spends five plus hours preparing. And then they’re at the mediation all that day, and then you pay the mediator. If you do that on both sides, and you mediate a case, you could get a long way toward finishing a collaborative case with all the bells and whistles for the same amount.
Camille Milner:
And so if you think about how much realistically doing a mediated case is, and you can have so much more layer of quality and discipline with the different professionals and the different disciplines, you can understand why for the same amount of money or very little more than a mediation gives you, you’ve got a settlement that is what we call a durable settlement. It’s a settlement that not just tonight at midnight when everybody is tired they’re glad to say “We settled it.” But in a year or two years, these collaborative clients that I’ve told you about, and I’ve got dozens, I still have lunch with them on a regular basis, so that they can tell me what’s gone on since I last saw them.
Camille Milner:
They are almost all, I cannot even think of one that has ever said they wish they had gone the other direction and gone litigation or mediation. In fact, I’ve had a lot of people that went through litigation or mediation, that regret not going through collaborative, and I had one in particular that took me out in the hall in the middle of a litigated case at a break, into the conference room, and said “I want you to promise me you will tell every client from now on, I’m in the midst of litigation, and if I had it to do over, I would do collaborative no question about it.” And in that case, they spent… at that time I think it was one of the largest professional fees in Denton County, but it was a business, and a lot of property, and two business appraisers, and two custody evaluation professionals testifying, and it was hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the family was wrecked.
Camille Milner:
So even though these people had several million dollars, it wasn’t worth it. And at the end of the day, the judge basically did 50%, or cut the two business appraisers evaluations in half, and split the kids in a… going to court didn’t really make it better, and it made it a lot worse in a lot of ways.
John Susko:
I mediated a case where there was a relocation case where one professional was going to another town across the country, and there was… and I’m old fashioned, I basically bring the people in the same room to do the mediation, at least to start. And although the lawyers don’t really like that because they get antsy and stuff, but I’ve learned that mom was okay with that, and also with dad’s new wife, and they talked. And they had a child who was very gifted, this child was probably 10 years old, and was a master pianist, and dad was going to some place that probably has international people in the pianist role. And they could have talked and settled it, I basically after going through the case for about 45 minutes, I said to the wife, I said “Here’s what I’d recommend, I’d recommend we call this mediation off right now, and you get a collaborative attorney and let your…” she had a board certified attorney and he was willing to do that. He was willing to let another attorney take it, and he would stay on for litigation.
John Susko:
And then I went to the husband, and the husband… they didn’t give me anything, again, they came in with their lawyers and a paralegal, they each had paralegals. And they hadn’t exchanged anything, they had not talked to each other. And I said you can do this. Well, the other side said “You’re not doing anything.” I said “I know.” I said “I can’t do anything because I don’t have anything to do it.” But you could solve this case, and they would have been able to talk to each other, and they would have had a… they spent eight hours, and the paralegals settled it. The paralegals got it done, and they paid a bunch of money, and it was sad.
John Susko:
And they could have done…
Camille Milner:
I’m sorry, go ahead.
John Susko:
…they could have done it in one session. I know they could have done it in one session, because they were so close, but because they put their structures up, and they needed to do it the old fashioned way, it cost them lots of money, and they probably are going to be litigating it for a long time.
Camille Milner:
And it’s just heartbreaking, those kids’ college funds that are getting spent on that. One of my colleagues here in town and my co-trainer who is another lawyer says that when clients come in like that, they’re this close, and once the lawyers start doing the litigation, they start getting father and farther apart. And if we handle it correctly, we’ll get them done. But if it’s… and you’re right, it’s the old fashioned way. The other way Chip Rose, our trainer from California described it…
John Susko:
Where’s Chip Rose from? Is he from…
Camille Milner:
…well he’s actually from Santa Cruz, California, but he has now relocated to Oregon. But I think he still practices in the Santa Cruz area. And I love the way he put it, he said a couple of different things. He said when people come in and say “What’s the law?” He says “Why would you shoot so low? Why don’t you want more than just what your rights are under the law when you can have so much more?” And he said “And then the difference in what we do is do you want chainsaw surgery, or do you want arthroscopic, artful surgery that will leave very little scarring, and will leave the patient in good shape?” And that really illustrates it for me best, it really is the difference.
Camille Milner:
When you’ve got lawyers that are very prepared and collaborative, and then the clients that are very prepared, what happens is the clients do the negotiating, because they’ve become empowered, and educated about what their options are and what the information is, and they make informed decisions, and that’s the reason that they are durable and they’re happy with them for years ahead, because they’ve made those decisions with very sound reasoning, not totally emotional, although emotion comes into it, but we manage the emotions and that enables them to make good business decisions.
John Susko:
Well Camille, I want to thank you. You and I could probably talk for a long, long time, but I think we need to cut this off at this point in time. I just want to thank you again for your time today, and thank you for this book here, the Collaborative Denton County book, and also the Build a Brand, a book that you and your husband have written. They’re on my desk every day, and I appreciate that. And I look forward to seeing you in a couple weeks, or probably about three weeks I guess, over here in Pensacola, and I hope we can get some of the folks from the Okaloosa County area to come over, and see you and your husband.
Camille Milner:
Well what I’d like them to know is that Denton is not unlike Okaloosa County, because we’re a smaller county, we’re outside of the metropolitan area, and we have a little bit of a marbled, we’re not unlike that in so many ways. We have a little bit of a marbled county, the northwest and north part of our county is still totally rural, and then the south part of our county is very metropolitan. And so we’ve had to… that’s why Denton’s practice group I think is one that a lot of people look to, because we are small enough that we have been forced to do some experimentation to learn how to adapt this to modest means, but that is a gift, because then we’re able to help a bigger range of people.
Camille Milner:
So thank you for having me on your show, John. It was our lucky day when we got to meet you in Chicago.
John Susko:
Well, thank you. And again, I’m looking forward to having you at our forum in March. So thank you, and I want to… my office has put this podcast together, I’ve been practicing for almost 40 years off and on, and I do collaborative law, and if you have any questions, please give me a call, or look at my website, and we’ll go from there. Thank you very much, and thank you, and goodbye.
Speaker 1:
This has been John Susko’s A Better Way to Divorce podcast. John Susko is a Florida family law attorney.
