Holland’s Collaborative Law Association hosted a three-day Collaborative Law Training for lawyers, financial advisors and executive coaches from March 17 through March 19 in the resort town of Nunspeet, The Netherlands. The training was held at the Villa Vennendal in Nunspeet.
Two Massachusetts lawyers, Michael Zeytoonian and Paul Faxon, were invited by the Dutch Association of Collaborative Professionals to present the intensive training, focusing on using Collaborative Law in business disputes. Members from all three of Holland’s Collaborative Law regional practice groups attended and were actively engaged in the workshops, role plays and other demonstrations. A local training team from The Netherlands joined Faxon and Zeytoonian and conducted a half day training in Dutch, focusing on using Collaborative Law in divorce matters.
The training focused on the basics of Collaborative Law on day one. On day two and three, the participants applied Collaborative Law in three different types of cases – a partnership breakup, a construction case dispute with multiple parties and subcontractors, and a family business/family inheritance dispute. Financial advisors and executive coaches served as neutrals in the Collaborative Law role plays for the group.
This is the third time a Collaborative Law training team has been invited to The Netherlands to train lawyers and other professionals in Collaborative Law. On prior occasions, the team of Rita Pollak of Tucson, Arizona (formerly of Massachusetts) and Cathy Heenan of Massachusetts, were invited to do those trainings.
The Collaborative Law community in Holland is fairly new, having started only a few years ago, but very committed and energized. This year, the national Dutch association wanted to expand the use of Collaborative law into business, employment and other areas of practice.
Both Zeytoonian and Faxon have trained groups in Collaborative Law in Europe before, Zeytoonian in Ireland and Faxon most recently in November, 2015 in the Basque Region of Spain.
“We were energized by the enthusiasm and engagement of the participants in Holland over three days of training,” Zeytoonian noted. “Collaborative Law, particularly its use in business and other non-divorce disputes, is an emerging and evolving practice, both in the United States and even more so in Europe, the United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland and Australia. One of the valuable features of Collaborative Law is its adaptability,” he added, “which is important because each country presents a different set of procedural rules and court structures. It calls on us as practitioners to be responsive to the situation each dispute presents, and Collaborative Law is a process in which creativity and flexibility can flourish,” Zeytoonian observed.
Paul Faxon also commented on Collaborative Law’s utility. “Collaborative Law is particularly ideal in family-owned or closely-held businesses, where preserving relationships, maintaining confidentiality and being cost and time efficient – all critical factors for smaller businesses – are important.” Acknowledging that approximately 80% of the businesses in The Netherlands are family-owned, Faxon pointed out that “Collaborative law is a perfect fit, and is especially welcomed by those who are entrepreneurial in nature and like to maintain control over both the process and the outcome. It is a dispute resolution process that empowers clients and allows them, along with their lawyers and other Collaborative professionals, to use their creativity to come up with the best possible resolution of their dispute,” he noted.
Faxon and Zeytoonian will team up again on a presentation on Collaborative Law offered by the Massachusetts Bar Association’s (MBA) Alternative Dispute Resolution Committee on May 17 at the MBA office in Boston. They will be joined in a panel discussion that evening by financial advisor David Consigli and lawyer/mediator/arbitrator John Fieldsteel.
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