Building Bridges to Resolve Conflict and Overcome the Prisoner's Dilemma: The Vital Role of Professional Relationships in the Collaborative Law Process

Part 1 of this article describes the rapid growth of Collaborative Practice and the dense fabric of professional relationships that has been woven with the Collaborative Practice community. Part H explores the Prisoner's Dilemma, which explains why, in the absence of such relationships and mutual commitments to collaboration, there are hard-to-resist pressures to engage in competitive, win-lose, adversarial forms of negotiation. Part II also explores the role that lawyers can play in overcoming those pressures. Part III is based on interviews with teams of Collaborative lawyers and other professionals, who describe the personal qualities and skills that support strong relationships among professionals.

Part III argues that these relationships form a vital bridge that enables clients to solve the Prisoner's Dilemma, overcome the temptation to pursue a self-defeating competitive strategy, and create a trusting environment in which mutually rewarding outcomes can be achieved.