Does A Coach Approach to the Practice of Law Work?
My name is Philip Daunt. I have been practicing law for over 25 years and providing mediation services for over half that time. I have practiced in a large law firm and in small firms and as a sole practitioner. I have done transactional work, and I have worked in litigation. I have worked with judges, arbitrators and mediators and with lawyers of all types. During my legal career, I have made a number of observations regarding the predominant legal system that is in use in the United States today. Regardless of the legal setting, it has been my experience that, typically, the participants, (principals and advocates alike), approach the legal process from the perspective that they need to dominate the other parties in order to avoid being dominated themselves. They believe that someone needs to be blamed for a legal situation and that someone had better be someone else. They believe that acknowledging responsibility for a legal situation will result in their “losing” to the other side. Having defined “losing” as anything but dominating and “prevailing” over the other party, they believe that losing means that they have failed, and, therefore, they are "failures," unworthy of self-respect or self-esteem unless they dominate the other side. The cost of adopting these assumptions, in terms of time, money, stress, relationships and psychological, emotional and physical health, can be enormous.
Some time ago, I reached the conclusion that there had to be a better way. Initially I was led to seek training as a mediator. I then discovered that mediation alone didn’t adequately shift the legal paradigms of the participants. Often the mediators, themselves, hadn’t been trained to abandon the domination model for a partnership model. Without coaching, the participants couldn’t see the advantages to be derived from giving up the need to dominate the other party in order to avoid being dominated by the other party. As a result, they were not open to explore synergistic solutions to their legal problems. This led me to focus on forming a greater mentorship role with my clients, teaching them the skill sets that they needed to have in order to see the possibility of forging solutions to their legal problems that worked for the higher good of all of the participants and to see that they were better served by such solutions than by the solutions made available by the old domination model. Out of this developed a “Coach Approach to the Practice of Law.” The results can be phenomenal! By taking responsibility and giving up blame, clients can find their true power. They are able to craft solutions to their legal problems that would not have been available under the old paradigm, and they can do so at a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the stress that would have been generated by the old system. It has been my experience that the Coach Approach to the Practice of Law consistently delivers solutions to clients’ legal problems in less time, with less stress and with superior bottom-line results to those achieved by more traditional methods of legal practice.
A Lawyer’s Fiduciary Duty
If a coach approach to the practice of law works, consistently delivering solutions to clients’ legal problems in less time, with less stress and with superior bottom-line results to those achieved by more traditional methods of legal practice, is it the lawyer’s fiduciary duty to the client to attempt to apply a coach approach to the client’s legal problems before resorting to the more stressful, combative, antagonistic, blame-based and costly methods that are typically used in a more traditional legal practice? Is it a lawyer’s ethical obligation to the client to expose the client to what some might describe as “Stealth Spirituality” or “Pragmatic Enlightenment” if doing so can result in the client receiving a superior bottom-line result from the lawyer? Coach Approach Lawyers believe that the answer to these questions is a resounding “Yes.”