I graduated from University of Washington School of Law back in 2007, when Seattle rents didn’t shock the conscience and tech bros didn’t clog the dating pool. I’ve been practicing law during the 12 years since then. A few years ago, I finally figured out what I was doing, and after that I became a firm shareholder. These days, my focus is on the success of my business and clients, meeting my billable requirements, and doing my best to avoid the onslaught of treats in the office kitchen (the holidays were a particularly fraught time with respect to this last item).
Life as a lawyer was going just fine, but a couple of months ago, I started wondering: Is this it? I’m good at what I do, and I make money at it, so do I just do this until I die? (As an old millennial working during the U.S. political apocalypse, I operate under the assumption that retirement is off the table.) I worried that I was heading toward a safe-but-boring career path, and safe-but-boring is not a professional goal of mine except in the context of choosing outfits to wear in front of judges.
With that concern in mind, I wheedled my two law partners into letting me take a week off work to attend a mediation training last month. I figured serving as a third-party neutral couldn’t be that much different than acting as an advocate — at the end of the day we both just want to help people work out their stuff. And I was also just interested in sitting in a different chair at the negotiation table for the first time in a dozen years. At a minimum, trying a mediator’s hat on for size could help me be a better advocate during future mediations.
I came to Day One of the training with my lunch packed and my homework — a worksheet on conflict-resolution styles — completed. I was planning to be a model student. At least that was my objective before I forgot to set my alarm and showed up late and un-showered. I later cemented my non-model-student status by falling asleep during the presentation on intense human emotion. In my defense, the classroom was unreasonably warm and cozy for a place of learning.
It didn’t take long to figure out that this was not going to be a typical continuing legal education course where you sit there and get talked at. We were going to have to interact with each other. We were going to have to share thoughts and feelings. We were going to have to… think… and actually do stuff.
It was a very nice change of pace, until I realized that being a lawyer is not just a job: It is also a way of thinking and approaching conflict resolution. The type of mediation we were learning is called “facilitative” — the main goal is for the parties to the dispute to reach their own agreement without outside influence. The idea is that they will be more satisfied with the result if they exercise self-determination, just like the American revolutionaries and teenagers with helicopter parents.
The problem is that lawyers like me are in the business of telling people what the issues are, and what information is important, and what the options are, and what a good result would be in a given situation. With facilitative mediation, the strategy is to ask open-ended questions and let the parties figure out their own potential solutions. After many years of telling people what to think and want, it was hard to sit back and let people find their own way.
It also seemed to me to be a wildly inefficient way of problem solving, since it involved a lot of verbal meandering and emotional wrangling. I’m so used to trying to cut to the chase as soon as possible for the sake of efficiency. Time costs my clients money. Let’s make a deal and move on. But what I came to understand after a few mock mediations was that the only people who really know what they want to get out of dispute resolution are the parties to the conflict. So trying to push them toward the “best” outcome is not really feasible — because you as mediator don’t know what that is.
Indeed, the outcome you as the mediator think is preferable may just result from a function of your own personal biases and experiences. For example, I participated as mediator in a mock mediation between two fake roommates, and I was pushing so hard to get them to be friends when really they just were there to work out a study/socializing schedule, since one of them was a fake grad student. I was shoving them in the wrong direction only because I thought personally it would be pretty miserable to live with someone you didn’t get along well with, on top of having a few roommate horror stories of my own. (I don’t even want to think about the Craigslist chick who would get naked and smoke a pack of cigarettes when stressed.)
Additionally, the parties to the dispute often are able to come up with potential solutions to problems that perhaps would not even have occurred to me as the mediator. For instance, in a mock mediation about neighbors sparring over falling tree leaves, the parties resolved the problem by scheduling a monthly dinner to discuss clean-up responsibilities. It ultimately turned out it was very important to both of these neighbors to maintain a healthy relationship, unlike my two mock roommates who couldn’t care less about each other.
It was also a new experience to take the focus off the goal of simply reaching resolution quickly and efficiently, and instead taking extreme care to make sure that the both parties to the dispute are entering into a “durable” agreement. (That’s an agreement that the parties can and will voluntarily comply with, without any outside prompting such as a scary letter from an attorney.) The need to enter into that sort of agreement means that, as mediator, you could risk imploding an impending agreement for the sake of ensuring that both parties are 100 percent ready to comply with it. That’s a scary thought for someone used to trying to efficiently resolve things.
Ultimately, stepping into the mediation role was a challenge in that I had to take myself and my own goals and perceptions out of the equation, and instead serve as an unbiased referee — all while somehow being able to remain aware of my own biases. It’s also difficult to find yourself as a rookie again after spending years of practicing law. (I mean, the next step to becoming an established mediator is more advanced training and then a boatload of volunteering, which involves a daunting amount of unbillable time for a lawyer.)
Skipping a week of work to complete the training was rough. I had to come into the office at night to bill time, during evening hours normally dedicated to sitting around my apartment with my cat. But after years of following the same analytical and strategic path as a lawyer, it was absolutely worth it even just for the sake of spending some time engaged in a new way of thinking. Seeing things from this different perspective made dispute resolution feel fresh and exciting again.
I recommend that anyone feeling a bit too comfortable in their lawyer job take the risk and try something different — even if you can’t charge for your time. It could be a springboard to a new career path, a chance to build on where you are now, or just an opportunity to see things from a new light. Just be sure to stay awake for the experience.
Allison Peryea is a shareholder attorney at Leahy Fjelstad Peryea, a boutique law firm in downtown Seattle that primarily serves community association clients. Her practice focuses on covenant enforcement and dispute resolution. She is a longtime humor writer with a background in journalism and cat ownership. You can reach her by email at Allison.Peryea@leahyps.com.
Can You Teach An Old Lawyer New Tricks? A Longtime Attorney Takes A Weeklong Mediation Training curated from Above the Law
No comments:
Post a Comment