Unbundled Services to Enhance Peacemaking for Divorcing Families

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12165
• Author: Forrest S. Mosten
• Date: 01 July 2015
• Published date: 01 July 2015

UNBUNDLED SERVICES TO ENHANCE PEACEMAKING FOR

DIVORCING FAMILIES

Forrest S. Mosten

Unbundling, also known as limited-scope representation, has been adopted by judges, the organized legal profession, and

divorcing parties. Unbundling is a legal access approach to better and more affordably serve unrepresented divorce litigants as

well as to assist overburdened and underfunded courts. This article will focus on another critical benefit of unbundling: the

ability of divorcing professionals to provide information and support to divorcing families to help reduce family conflicts. This

article shall discuss four unbundled peacemaking roles that lawyers can play: (1) Collaborative Lawyer; (2) Lawyer Coach for

Self-Represented Litigants; (3) Lawyer for Mediation Participants; and (4) Preventive Legal Health Care Provider.

Key Points for the Family Court Community:

Overview of limited-scope lawyering roles

Impact of unbundled representation on peacemaking

Best practices of noncourt lawyering

Keywords: Collaborative Law; Limited-Scope Representation; Mediation; Peacemaking; Prevention of Conflict; Self-

Represented Divorce Litigants; and Unbundled Legal Services.

WHAT ARE UNBUNDLED LEGAL SERVICES AND HOW DO THEY WORK?

Unbundling is not a new concept. Essentially, unbundling is an agreement between the client and

lawyer to limit the scope of services that the lawyer renders. There are numerous replicable models

of lawyers successfully unbundling their services to increase legal access.

1

Examples of unbundling include the following:

Advice: If a client wants advice only, advice can be offered at an initial consultation or

throughout the case as determined by the client with input from the lawyer. The lawyer and

client collaborate in helping the client decide if and when further consultations may be

needed.

Research: Based on the lawyer’s advice, if the client wants legal research, a personal or tel-

ephonic/Web unbundled service provides this legal information. Research may take as little

as 15 minutes or as much as ten hours. The client and lawyer are teammates in joint charge

of determining the scope of the job and who will do the work—the lawyer, the client, or a

negotiated collaborative effort between the two.

Drafting: Lawyers can ghostwrite letters or court pleadings for the client to transmit or

review and comment on documents the client has prepared or be engaged only to send a

letter on behalf of the client on law firm letterhead.

Negotiation: The lawyer can teach the client how to negotiate with his/her spouse or the

spouse’s lawyer directly in preparation for mediation or a settlement meeting. Or the lawyer

can be engaged to conduct negotiations on behalf of the client without being counsel of

record for the entire court case.

Court appearances: If a client desires, an unbundled lawyer can offer limited representation

for court appearances, hearings, and mediation. At the other end of the spectrum, lawyers

Correspondence: www.MostenMediation.com

FAMILY COURT REVIEW, Vol. 53 No. 3, July 2015 439–448

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C2015 Association of Family and Conciliation Courts