The new Collaborative Participation Agreement is LIVE

A note by FLiP Director James Pirrie on the new Collaborative Participation Agreement.

… and it sent me on a wander back through the museum of old documents on our server.

Strangely the first letter was exactly eighteen years ago, a note to Rosemary Polack discussing our plans to bring a trainer over from the United States, to offer this new way of working to a profession, grown in a soil that we knew would make it want to grab the model with both hands …

And a little under 800 invitations later, and under a banner of “law without litigation, mediation with advice” twenty of us gathered in Covent Garden at the end of September 2003 for the first training in Europe …

How can we resist to list the names (I do hope I have not missed anyone):

And then straight off to Vancouver (Charlotte Bradley, James Stewart, Ruth Smallacombe and me) for the movement’s annual conference.  All early and inspirational days, filled with passionate certainties and naïve expectations that always seem to accompany a movement’s finding its feet.

And some time later, back to announce “Collaborative Law has Arrived”, adding “its use should extend along a large part of the continuum of cases that reach us in our professional lives, but more importantly start to bring in part of a larger well of clients that for various reasons, avoid going anywhere near the professional’s office for fear of what may carry them away.”

Our first draft participation agreement seems to have had firmly as the parties “husband” and “wife” [painful to read – but forgive us for reflecting the different times!]  before pages of lawyerly wordsmithing.

How I wish we could have generated then what has emerged from Resolution this week … an agreement which operates as part explanatory note, part enthusiasm builder, part ‘next steps’ but setting out clearly the rules along the way.  Fortunately my latest collab has had its first meeting delayed – I can imagine stronger foundations, faster clearer uptake and better progress all coming from this brilliant piece of work – no more bogged down in the schedules we drafted with far too much of “yes don’t worry about that too much right now”.

Special mention for Angela Lake-Carroll, who we read has had a major hand in it.  There at the beginning as we saw above – and still at the coal-face making great things better for all of us, all these years later.

A wonderful job.  Thank you!

And where WILL we be finding ourselves in March 2039, I wonder?