In The News
Laurie Israel has been asked by Lawyers Weekly to join the panel of family law experts for a Continuing Education Program on January 28, 2010, from 1 – 5 p.m. 
She will join a panel which includes attorneys Alan Gesmer, Joyce Kauffman, Marsha Kararosian, and Robyn Honig. Laurie’s topics will include effect of the new Massachusetts Probate Code on marriages and divorces, bankruptcy discharge exception under 11 USC 523(a)(15) for debts incurred in connection with divorce, update on prenuptial agreements, update on recent cases, including effect of retention of S corpration earnings on support obligations.
Laurie Israel and John Fiske, both pioneers in the emerging marital mediation field, will present the first two-day training on marital mediation to be held on March 5 and 6, 2010, at Wellesley College Club, Wellesley, Massachusetts. Visit John or Laurie’s websites for more information and registration.
Laurie Israel was quoted in the Boston Globe on March 18, 2009, along with Steven Ballard, in an article by Meredith Goldstein about “Do it Yourselves Divorce”. Laurie expressed the view that most divorces do not lend themselves to DIY, because of the fairness issues that are often overlooked when people do not know what “the law” provides. Often one party or another gives up “too much” and regrets it later. In her own practice, when faced with clients who think theycan do it themselves, she asks “would you take out your own appendix”? In the article, Laurie was quoted as saying “You don’t know what’s fair until you’re a divorce lawyer”. What was left out of the quote was the 3 words that followed it “…or a judge”.
Laurie Israel was quoted in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly article “Demand for ADR, mediation up, family law bar reports” (August 24, 2009).
Demand for ADR, mediation up, family-law bar reports
More clients now seeking cheaper ways to divorce
By Julia Reischel
Published: August 24, 2009
Family-law attorneys who specialize in mediation and “collaborative practice” say they are seeing a
marked increase in demand for their services, a phenomenon they suspect is fueled by the faltering
economy.
“The number of cases involving mediation or collaborative practice is twice as much as it was last year,”
said Howard I. Goldstein, a partner at Rosenberg, Freedman & Goldstein in Newton. “I’m getting two or
three inquires a week about mediation. That’s really unusual.”
Others say they have noticed a jump in business as well.
“I feel like I’m standing under Niagara Falls,” Cambridge mediator John A. Fiske said. “I’m swamped. It’s
amazing because I got just one phone call in December, and now I can’t keep up. These are salad days
for mediators.”
Laurie G. Israel reports a similar rush of work.
“We are intensely busy,” the Brookline collaborative-law practitioner said, speculating that, regardless of
what the economy is doing, “people still need to get divorces.” What has changed, Israel said, is that
these people are seeking more cost-effective ways to undergo the process, with less conflict involved.
In mediation, the parties typically work with a single lawyer and split the costs, while in the
collaborative-law process, each side has an attorney and participates in what amounts to a four-way
negotiation. Both methods avoid the lengthy and costly process of a traditionally litigated divorce.
“Even the most affluent, well-heeled clients are now fee-sensitive,” Goldstein said. “This is the new
frugality.”
‘Going gangbusters’
Because the Probate & Family Court does not track divorces that involve mediation at some point in the
process, there is no reliable way to confirm the anecdotal evidence that more would-be litigants are
turning to ADR.
“Mediation cases don’t show up in the filings,” Goldstein said. “There’s no statistics about things like
collaborative practice, arbitration or other methods of dispute resolution.”
Preliminary data shows that the number of divorces filed in Massachusetts in fiscal year 2009 rose to
21,233, compared to 21,067 in fiscal 2008.
Those figures suggest that if more litigants are choosing ADR, they are using it in conjunction with the
court system rather than in place of it.
But there is other evidence to suggest that the use of ADR in family law is on the rise. Divorce attorney
Martin F. Kane said the conciliation program he runs in conjunction with the Middlesex County Bar
Association has been “going gangbusters” over the past year.
“The numbers are up,” he said. “I think that’s based on the economy, but I also think that more and
more practitioners are seeing the benefits of this.”
Through July 2009, the Middlesex program has received 221 cases, putting it on track to exceed the 338
cases it handled for all of 2008, Kane said.
And the trend is present in other counties as well. Between July 1, 2007, and June 30, 2008, volunteer
lawyers in Essex County conciliated 238 family-law cases, while between July 2008 and June 2009 they
handled 290 cases, according to the Essex County Bar Association, which runs the conciliation program.
‘Cost savings?’
Although family-law practitioners agree there is more demand for mediation and collaborative-law
approaches in their practice area, they offer different explanations for why the phenomenon is occurring.
Some believe the economy is motivating clients to consider ADR.
“It’s got to be,” Fiske said. “I charge $400 an hour. Most couples take 10 hours or less of my time to get
a complete divorce, so the total cost is $4,000. When clients go to a lawyer downtown, and the lawyer
says, ‘We’ve got to start with a retainer of $30,000, and we’ll spend that on discovery,’ it’s very
different.”
Israel, the Brookline collaborative-law practitioner, said some of her divorce-seeking clients explicitly cite
cost as the reason they turned to alternative dispute resolution.
“We are seeing people who want mediation more, and some of them want it purely for the cost
savings,” she said.
But other lawyers question whether the economy is the primary motivator for their clients’ growing
interest in ADR, suggesting instead that a larger public awareness of the many benefits of mediation and
collaborative law is causing the rise in demand.
“I am not much busier than I was a year ago, but I am finding that more and more people know about
their options in terms of a non-adversarial process,” Worcester mediator Marcia E. Tannenbaum said.
When she wanted to list her practice in the Worcester telephone directory some 10 years ago,
Tannenbaum said, she had to request a new category heading for mediation services because no one
had ever heard of it.
“What has happened over the last four to six years is that it is now normative for people to know about
mediation,” she said. “What I’m seeing is that people know about it. They may not know how it works,
or really understand your role as a mediator, but they know about it.”
Doris F. Tennant, a Newton mediator and collaborative-law specialist, said that she, too, has
encountered more demand for ADR than usual this summer.
“I definitely have found that more people are calling me now and specifically identifying the process [of
collaborative divorce] as what they want, as opposed to a couple of years ago,” she said.
Tennant believes that collaborative law and mediation have become more mainstream, citing as an
example the 2007 hit film “Juno” in which one of the characters made a reference to “collaborative
divorce.”
“I think that it is becoming better known,” she said. “It’s gotten more publicity. And I would say that, in
the past 18 months, more people have been calling specifically requesting collaborative divorces.”
But, she conceded, the economy might be motivating prospective clients to search for affordable
alternatives to litigation.
“People may be doing more research,” she said.
