Collaborative negotiation
We live in a rapidly changing world. These changes are also grinding into the legal world.
Instead of rigid and lengthy procedures, people are increasingly looking for alternatives to solve their problems more quickly and cheaply.
Alternative Dispute Resolution:
collaborative negotiatorThe term Alternative Dispute Resolution or ADR for short is becoming increasingly common. This term flag covers a wide range of possible ways of resolving disputes.
For a long time, the best-known form of ADR was undoubtedly arbitration. Today, however, there are an increasing number of different types of alternative ways to resolve disputes.
Mediation, in particular, has gained in importance in recent years. However, the main disadvantage of mediation is that it is led by a “neutral third party” acting as a mediator.
The parties themselves can choose whether or not to be accompanied by their own lawyer. This is therefore, in our opinion, the biggest stumbling block of mediations.
After all, the parties must accept that the management of the dispute is, as it were, handed over to a third party. To deal with this, the so-called collaborative negotiation can be chosen.
A collaborative negotiation is a negotiation between parties herein assisted by an attorney who has received special training and has been recognized as a collaborative negotiator.
Collaborative negotiation has a number of advantages compared to a classic judicial procedure. First of all, a collaborative negotiation process will generally be able to be completed much faster than a classic judicial procedure.
In addition, parties remain in control at all times. In our opinion, this is the greatest advantage of collaborative negotiation. This does not involve a third party.
A collaborative negotiation is conducted exclusively between the parties themselves and their respective attorney/collaborative negotiator. If the parties do not reach an agreement, they can of course still decide to take the dispute to court.
Strict direction:
A characteristic feature of collaborative negotiation is the fact that it is embedded in the legal code. For example, the Judicial Code provides several rules that a collective negotiation must comply with.
The main requirement is that only lawyers who have undergone training may act as collaborative negotiators. The procedure itself is also very strictly regulated. This has the advantage that parties can be very well prepared by their lawyer and know in advance exactly how the procedure will proceed.
Before going through a collaborative negotiation process, parties will be required to sign a protocol outlining the principles of collaborative negotiation.
Strict confidentiality:
Also characteristic of a collaborative negotiation is the very strike confidentiality obligation. All that is discussed during a collaborative negotiation process as well as all documents exchanged by the parties in the course of this process are strictly confidential.
This means that this information and/or documents can never be used in any subsequent possible legal proceedings. This allows parties to negotiate openly.
Withdrawal requirement:
A final feature of collaborative negotiation is the obligation for attorneys acting in the context of a negotiation process to withdraw from the case upon completion of the process.
This means that the attorney assisting a party in the negotiation process should never act in connection with any subsequent court proceedings. Again, this should give parties a guarantee that no information or document exchanged between the parties during the negotiation process will surface at a final stage as part of any court proceedings.