So What is a Meitheal Anyway?

Dispute Settlement Counsel by Michael Zeytoonian.

The Fall issue of The Collaborative Review (Vol. 15, Issue 2), has just been published and features an article by Michael Zeytoonian, Director of Dispute Resolution Counsel, LLC in Wellesley and Westborough, MA about the essence of Collaborative Law.  The article is entitled “What Makes Collaborative Law Collaborative Law (really)?” and it focuses on what is at the core of Collaborative Law’s process and how this approach changes how lawyers and clients resolve disputes.  Here are a few excerpts:

It’s the collaboration that works the magic of this process.  It’s the combined efforts, intelligence, creativity, passion, experience, spirit and energy of all the people in the Collaborative meeting as they work, talk, listen, exchange ideas and relevant information, identify interests and goals, and build on each other’s thoughts and suggestions, all in one focused, structured gathering… 

The Irish call this [Collaborative] meeting a “Meitheal”, the work group, the formal process of coming together for a common purpose, a traditional method of accomplishing as communal objective, where the process is as highly valued as the resulting outcome… 

Collaborative Business Law is more than just using an alternative dispute resolution process.  We are asking everyone involved to think and act differently – to truly collaborative   with each other.  We are urging people to go back and uncover the person each of us was created and born to be.  We are advocating for the kind of response to disputes that naturally emanated from the people and the kinds of communities were once were, before we became adversarial, partisan, litigious and blame-fixated.    

                       

Michael A. Zeytoonian

Michael A. Zeytoonian is the Founding Member and Director of Dispute Resolution Counsel, LLC and is a lawyer, mediator and ombudsman. He is formerly a partner and now Of Counsel at Hutchings, Barsamian, Mandelcorn & Zeytoonian, LLP, in Wellesley Hills, MA. He specializes in employment law, business law, special education… MORE >