[JOE]:
Between writing notes, filing insurance claims, and scheduling of clients, it can be hard to stay organized. That’s why I recommend TherapyNotes. Their easy-to-use platform lets you manage your practice securely and efficiently. Visit www.therapynotes.com to get two free months of therapy notes today. Just use the promo code JOE when you sign up for a free trial at www.therapynotes.com.

This is the Practice of the Practice podcast with Joe Sanok, session number 496.

I hope you’re doing awesome. I hope that your world is good. I hope that you are creative and coming up with ideas and doing all sorts of things that are gonna help you get to the next level. The more that you can push yourself, the more you’re able to kind of get to that next level, but it doesn’t come from a place of lacking. It comes from a place of I get to do this work. I get to share this work with the world. I get to make it better in the little way that I can make it better. And today we’re talking about collaborative divorce. How to get referrals from attorneys. What is collaborative divorce? How do you as a therapist get trained in it? Randy Pitler, he’s an attorney that’s been working in the collaborative divorce area for a long time. And I love how Randy, in this episode, takes us through what is collaborative divorce. How are therapists involved? How does it work? I really went into the nitty-gritty of it. So without any further ado, here’s Randy Pitler.

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[JOE]:
Well, today on the Practice of the Practice podcast, we have Randy Pitler. Randy is a family law attorney who believes the decisions in a divorce should be made by the parties, not by a judge or a third party. Based on this belief, he founded Pitler Family Law and Mediation in 2004 to assist parties who wish to divorce amicably. The firm focuses on collaborative divorce, mediation and uncontested divorces. Randy, welcome to the Practice of the Practice podcast.

[RANDY]:
Oh, thank you, Joe. I’m very happy to be here.

[JOE]:
Yeah, well, it’s been a while since we had an attorney on here and I’m really excited to talk about a few different angles, one being amicable divorces, kind of talk about collaborative divorces and what therapists should know about that. But then also a big question I get is why and how you get attorneys to refer to you as a clinician? And so I would love to kind of take those two angles. But why don’t we first start with collaborative divorces – how did you get into that compared to maybe the typical divorce model that attorneys take?

[RANDY]:
Right. So for me, and this goes back probably about fifteen… more than fifteen years ago, and I had already taken the divorce mediation training that they offer here in Michigan. I’d already been frustrated with litigated divorces, it just felt to me that there has to be a better way. And suddenly, this collaborative divorce training showed up here in Michigan, and it’s something… collaborative divorce was actually created in Minnesota in the mid-nineties, by a guy named Stu Webb, who was trying to create a model to keep divorces out of court. And so he created this model where people and their attorneys did everything out of court. And the way he kind of enforced that was he created what’s called a Participation Agreement, it’s a contract that everybody who participates, the attorneys and the parties, sign. And one of the provisions of that Participation Agreement is a disqualification clause. So if anyone decides to break the collaborative process and go into court, the attorneys have to withdraw. So the idea is everything is done out of court. We don’t even file the divorce paperwork with the court until we have a signed final settlement. And so that enforcement provision, the idea is it keeps everybody in the process, that the attorneys, you know, we can’t muck up the works, get everybody angry at each other, run into court where we can make a whole lot of money, because as soon as they file in the court process, we’re out of the picture. And it keeps the parties committed to staying out of court because if either of them file, they now have to start over, pay more retainer fees, and start from scratch.

And since then, in the late nineties, there was a woman named Pauline Tesler in California that kind of added the interdisciplinary model that I think your listeners would be interested in, where we added divorce coaches, mental health professionals, to the process and also financial neutrals to help with the process. So it’s a full team approach. So I learned about this. I was trained in 2005 and since then, it’s really transformed my practice, where I pretty much exclusively focus on amicable divorces. I have a few cases here and there that sometimes go sideways and I stick with it in court. But the collaborative type divorces and working with mental health professionals has also transformed the litigation part of my practice, in that I do try and use mental health professionals even in non-collaborative cases, because it helps my clients and it benefits me.

[JOE]:
Yeah, so who isn’t a good fit for doing a collaborative divorce?

[RANDY]:
Yeah, I’m a little biased, because I think almost every case is a good fit. Others will argue with me. If there is domestic violence, and I absolutely do not want to kind of downplay domestic violence, but we can handle some of it because we do have a team around the participants. But if one party truly feels that it’s a very, very unlevel playing field, they feel intimidated by the process, it’s absolutely not going to work. But more importantly, if both parties are not willing to commit to negotiating in good faith, because we do not have some of the tools we have in court, like subpoenas and depositions and having people answer questions under oath. We have to rely on people. If we need documents, they have to produce them voluntarily. So if people are not willing to produce information voluntarily, if they’re going to try and hide assets, if they’re going to fail to disclose information, the process will not work. But we do encourage, there has to be full disclosure, people are not allowed to hide money. Even cheating – that is a great issue for collaborative divorce because we don’t ignore it, we don’t sweep it under the rug, we address it head-on and that’s where the coaches – and we can talk about that – are very helpful in that we want that disclosed, we want it on the table, we want people to talk about it so when we are actually talking about a settlement, we’re talking about a settlement. And nobody has the elephant in the room kind of staring over their shoulder, afraid to move because of what might be disclosed.

[JOE]:
Gotcha. Now, talk about the team approach. So having an integrative team, who’s typically on that team?

[RANDY]:
So there’s two attorneys, and each party still has their own attorneys. We are trained in collaborative divorce. And the roles of the attorneys are different, I say they’re more like advisors and adversaries, so we’re in the room. And these days it’s interesting, because like everyone else, we’re all Zoom. But my role is I’m more of my client’s advisor. So I’m not necessarily speaking for them, I’m helping them speak for themselves, but I’m certainly not beating up their spouse and the other attorney’s not beating up my client. We also use mental health professionals, their therapist or psychologist, as a divorce coach. And that can look a little different depending on the model you use.

Some people use a one or two coach model; the traditional Pauline Tesler model that she created is a two coach model, where each party in the case has their own divorce coach that they speak to outside the process, that coach can help them speak up, help deal with emotional issues, and there are issues that are specific to the divorce process. I’m always careful to remind people this is not therapy, and it’s not marriage counseling. But as you know, there are emotional issues with a divorce. Divorce is all about emotions. And the way I view a divorce coach in that kind of a setting is almost like a hitting coach in baseball, you know, that they’re helping the batter do the work outside the game, work on their swing, work on their hand-eye coordination. But when it’s game time, it’s up to the batter to get up there and take some swings. I picture the divorce coach the same way, that they’re working with them behind the scenes, they’re helping build them up, they’re helping them how to phrase things, how to process things. But once we get in the room, the person is on their own.

[JOE]:
So is the divorce coach still in the room, or is it they go in with just their attorneys?

[RANDY]:
It’s really only… it depends on the model and in most cases, the divorce coach is not in the room, unless there’s a reason for them to be there. We do… in Metro Detroit, we’ve kind of taken on a model where we use one divorce coach that’s used by both parties, which is helpful, and then they can work with the two parties together on communication issues, they could work with them on parenting time issues. But we started to use that coach also as a case manager. So they’re running the meeting, they’re sending out the agendas, we always send out an agenda ahead of time, we send minutes after the meeting. And the coach, they’re not necessarily responsible for typing all that up, but they’re sending it out. So it’s not coming from one or the other attorneys so it doesn’t appear that everything is one-sided. So everything is sent out by this neutral divorce coach. And then they’re running the meetings which is helpful, so if there are emotional issues – and in a typical divorce, you know, two-hour meeting where you’re talking about people’s finances and their children, there are going to be some hot button issues that come up. And to me, it’s really helpful to have that person kind of already sitting at the head of the table, who can jump in and help manage whatever comes up.

[JOE]:
And for a divorce coach, do they need to be fully licensed, or can that be bachelor’s level, or do they go through training? Because I’m thinking, there may be some grad students here who already have, say, a Bachelor’s in social work or psychology, that as they go through grad school… Do they have to be fully licensed master’s degree? Or what are the qualifications for a typical divorce coach?

[RANDY]:
That’s a good question. I’m not sure what… I know here we use… everybody I’ve used are people who are licensed, either therapist or psychologist, by whichever state agency licenses them. In other jurisdictions they may use other people, depending on the availability of coaches in that community.

To me, the more experience somebody has, the better coach they’re going to be. And this is what I alluded to before, I mean, the better coaches are people I learned from in every single case. I’ve learned over the years, and through this, you know, divorce is at least fifty percent emotional. And then when people are fighting over a house, they’re not really fighting over the house. It’s ‘he did this, she did this, he never wanted the house’, or, ‘she did this in the house, or something that’s really driving their motivation. And so it’s really… and this is why collaborative has really informed the rest of my practice because I’ve learned that people have other motivations other than what we think they are. And in a traditional divorce, us lawyers always get hung up in the dollars and the cents, or they get the house, and this person is going to then get this money over here, and this is it, but the people going through divorce aren’t thinking that way. They’re not thinking with a balance sheet. They’re thinking, hey, this SOB used this money to buy this car, and I’m getting that car, and has nothing to do with the, again, the dollars and cents.

[JOE]:
Sure.

[RANDY]:
And that has really helped me, one, in collaborative, we try and get down to that level. Because then we get a true interest-based negotiation, if we find out what people really want, what their true motivations are. Like, for example, that person who’s really pissed off about the car, we can help work with them on why they want that, and maybe they should let that go for some sort of reason. But it’s helped me in the rest of my practice. I’ve had some pretty amusing phone calls where I’ve called attorneys in litigated cases and said, hey, I know how we can settle the case. The reason your client really wants the house is because of this, this and this, and what they really want is some appreciation for the work they did in, you know, making the money so they could buy the house. And I think if my client is willing to say this, this and this, maybe your client will let that go. And the reason it’s amusing is that almost every time the litigation attorney is like, you’re nuts, that makes no sense. That’s not my job. I don’t care. And it’s so frustrating, because I’m handing them the keys to settling the case. And they won’t take it because their years of experience where they have not been working with mental health professionals is getting in the way.

[JOE]:
Yeah, now is part of that because they want to keep having more billable hours sometimes, too?

[RANDY]:
I think there’s some of that. I do think that most attorneys are generally good and they’re not churning a file. But I think some divorce attorneys are some of the worst… I hope no one [unclear] listens to this – just kidding – but I do think there are a lot of divorce attorneys who are pretty bad offenders in terms of, you know, they’re taking advantage of people at their most vulnerable point. There’s a lot of myths out there. There’s a lot of fear. There’s no shortage of friends that will get people riled up emotionally about the divorce. And I think there are plenty of divorce attorneys who are more than willing to take advantage of that to make a few extra bucks, which is very frustrating and sad.

[JOE]:
Yeah. Now, when there’s a mental health clinician that’s thinking, this sounds really interesting. It sounds like it could be a new arm of my business. What do they need to think through before they go through a training before they start becoming certified to do this type of work?

[RANDY]:
Well, I think they have to be committed to it. I mean, I don’t think it’s easy work. I think, to me, collaborative divorce is actually more difficult than litigated divorces, because you have to be on your toes, you are thinking about the emotions. And usually the mental health person in the room is feeling the brunt of all that, like I said in our single coach model. And actually, I had a meeting earlier today where we had some minor stuff we talked about, and then there was going to be a pretty serious discussion about temporary who was going to move out. It’s a new case, who’s going to move out, where they’re going to go. And I literally looked at the coach and said, okay, now I’ll leave it to you to do the heavy lifting. And so I think they have to be someone who knows what they’re doing, and is very comfortable being the center of attention, grabbing the bull by the horns and helping people resolve it. But I think it’s probably very rewarding, I would assume, I’ve been in plenty of therapy in my life, I’ve never been on that side of the couch. And I think, and from what people I talked to, it’s rewarding in that there’s a little bit more instant feedback, in that you’re resolving a divorce in three, four, five, six, seven months versus maybe spending a long time working with someone to make improvements with their lives.

[JOE]:
Yeah. So how does the payment typically work for the therapist that’s the coach?

[RANDY]:
Yes, everybody is paid – at least in our jurisdiction – everybody is paid separately. The parties pay the professionals, usually the hourly rate, and they pay them separately. I will say this in it, and also this could be an incentive for some people, is that I do know some of the mental health people in my community charge more for collaborative divorces than they do for the regular therapeutic work because they feel that it puts them on par, closer to on par, with the attorneys and maybe other professionals who are there. Plus, they recognize that their work is equally as valuable, if not, and I would argue, more than the attorneys, but it’s my understanding there are some jurisdictions around the country where the parties pool the money for the professionals, and then it’s kind of divvied up separately. So they’re not paying each particular professional directly. I know there are some jurisdictions that do these cases on flat fees.

[JOE]:
Okay. Well, what else should we know about collaborative divorce before we start talking more about getting just referrals in general from attorneys?

[RANDY]:
Right, um, I think – and it’s something also for therapists, I think, to help – one is referring their clients, even if they don’t want to participate in the process. It’s a way that I think people should get divorced. To me, it’s a way people would get divorced if we didn’t have courts, you know, you kind of find a way out of court and use mental health professionals, use financial planners to help resolve it. So I think when therapists have clients who are about to enter a divorce, steering them towards collaborative, I think, could help them. It definitely helps their clients. The one thing I do want to make clear is that we do draw a line of people who participate in the process cannot then treat people, you know, during or after the process. So if there’s an existing collaborative case, we generally do not use their existing therapist as coaches because we want there to be some kind of distance between them. But also, if somebody goes through the collaborative process, they can’t then turn around and use the divorce coach as their therapist when the process is over. And we also do that with the financial neutrals, like, for example, if they have a financial planner who helps them figure out who’s gonna get what in terms of the finances, neither party can turn around after the case and hire that planner to manage their money. We just want to take away any appearance of impropriety. We don’t want something when, you know, if one person then hired the coach as a therapist, the other spouse would probably wonder what was going on during the process. Was that coach helping them a little bit more? Were they building this relationship beforehand? The same with a financial planner, you know, were they doing something to give that person money so they could then manage it? So that way, we take that out of the equation. So that’s one thing, if someone’s coming into collaborative to get direct divorce business, it’s not going to work. But I do refer a lot of business to coaches that I use in collaborative, I’ll just refer other clients to them.

[JOE]:
That’s good to kind of parse that out and say how that referral works, and not. So I know that for a lot of the folks that I work with, they look to try to get referrals from attorneys and other people in their community. And before we started rolling, you were talking about how you were trying to get referrals from therapists. And so I’m wondering if each side of the table, maybe we could talk about, like, when someone is approaching you, maybe potentially wanting referrals from you, what do you look for? What do you hope for? What makes a good referral source to you? And also, what makes a good referral source that you’re sending people to?

[RANDY]:
Right. And so, what I look for in a therapist or mental health professional is, one is a specialty. If I get someone – and I do, and I think most attorneys get an email, mail solicitation, I’m actually a really big fan of snail mail solicitations, because they stand out these days whereas an email is easy to get buried in the inbox, but nobody sends much through the mail anymore – but if I get a brochure from a therapist, and it says, I address all your kind of typical anxiety, depression, whatever, I mean, they kind of list all of the typical issues [unclear] therapists, they’re probably less likely to get a referral from me. But if I get, you know, especially one is, if somebody… I know not everybody works with alcohol problems or drug addictions, but people who do that stand out. People who work with adolescents and children stand out, but people who really specialize. If somebody says they specialize in women going through divorce or grief, or men – and I don’t see a lot of people specializing in helping men – then that makes it easier for me to kind of say, when I have a client come in, say, oh, here’s somebody that works with your particular issue.

And one kind of interesting story I had is years ago, and this is when I started looking for specialties, is I had a woman therapist who I’d met, I really liked her, I sent clients to her and I got some positive feedback. Well, then I found out a few years later that her entire practice had migrated to helping basically men who are thinking about coming out, and issues related to gender and sexuality, and here I am sending her people for marriage counseling. And so that kind of got me for years. I actually sent out a newsletter to therapists with… it was basically divorced information for mental health professionals. But then I would say, invite me onto your couch, and I would do a lot of one-to-one, face-to-face networking with them. And yeah, I would always ask them, what are your specialties? What do you do? What’s your favorite client, or patient? What kind of people are you looking for? And then that helped me develop a list so when I had a client who was looking for somebody, I would say, oh, here’s a group of people that can help with your issue.

And so now I actually do have a list, when I have an initial consultation with a divorce client, I automatically give them a list of mental health professionals for them to choose from. And partly I do that because I figure, most people aren’t going to call me and say, hey, I need somebody, but at least I’m putting the list in front of them. And eventually, I do get feedback from a lot of those therapists that those people have called. But then the other primary… what I get from my clients when I mention about a therapist is they’re always looking for somebody close by. So that’s why I could never have, you know, enough names to refer people to because in Metro Detroit, we got three counties, and even those counties are split up, you know, it’s very segregated by both race and economically. So even if I have one particular specialty, if I had six names that kind of do the same thing, but they’re spread out over Metro Detroit, I can then refer each of them depending on where the person lives.

[JOE]:
Yeah. Is it helpful now that so many clinicians have gone online because of COVID?

[RANDY]:
I think so. And it’s funny, because as we’re saying this, I realized I’m actually not sending my new clients my referral list, because it’s in my hard copy of my packet that I give them on the first day. So I realized I need to be emailing that entire packet to them when they retain me. But yeah, I think in terms of the distance, it’s probably narrowed – not good for my referral list – but it’s probably narrowed the names of the people that I refer, because it’s not as important that the therapist is in your backyard.

[JOE]:
Yeah. So say someone doesn’t have someone thinking… in their town, they don’t have an attorney that is forward-thinking like you, seeing the value in mental health, what can they say to attorneys locally, that they think they should be handing out these kinds of mental health referral lists? How can they advocate to have attorneys refer to them or refer just in general to therapy?

[RANDY]:
Right. And I think it’s actually different… it depends on the attorney. Because I think there are a lot of attorneys who think ‘I can handle this’. And I think for me what’s helpful, and I think for if I was a therapist trying to get in with some attorneys who maybe aren’t as receptive to mental health professionals as I am, is kind of explaining what they can do to make their lives easier. Every attorney has a whole list, or we all have our worst stories of clients who will talk our ear off for forty-five minutes on mental health issues and things going on at home that really should be having the same conversation with a therapist. And I all the time will tell clients, I’ll cut them off and say, look, I can give you some names of people to talk to. They’re probably going to be less expensive, but they are trained to listen and to help you. But I have no training in any of these areas. So I think, if they are approaching an attorney, to say, look, when clients do this, and they start talking you’re ear off, send them to me. I can take that off of your shoulders, and then I can return them to you in a better place to help with their own case. Because the most difficult part of being a divorce attorney is, as I mentioned over and over, it’s a very emotional process. So when you have a client who’s, you know, emotions are taken over, it’s impossible to have a productive conversation about the pros and cons of the case, the potential settlement. So having them resolve those issues is going to make the lawyer’s job a lot easier.

[JOE]:
Well, Randy, the last question that I always ask is, if every private practitioner in the world were listening right now, what would you want them to know?

[RANDY]:
Now, I think what they… wait, hold on. Are you talking about in terms of divorce, or in any…?

[JOE]:
I mean, in regards to any private practice owner, clinician, counselor, just what would you want them to know? It could be inspirational, it can be practical, whatever you want to kind of capstone this conversation with.

[RANDY]:
Okay? No, I think my advice to anyone in that is, you know, one is to keep – this sounds very cliche as it’s coming out – keep doing what you’re doing, but make yourself known. I think, again, in my work with mental health professionals, it’s changed my practice. In that way I guess you could go all the way and say it’s changed my life in a lot of ways. And I do use a lot of the mental health practices or professionals that I work with to bounce personal issues off of, where I don’t feel like it’s a whole issue for therapy, of hey, this is part of my life, it’s good to have mental health people in their lives. And I do think that there’s a lot of therapists who are afraid to bring up what they do for a living. One thing I always talk about is every single conversation that you have with any human being is networking. I could tell you the story about how I met somebody in line for beers at an Eminem concert that led to a divorce client, that then led to two more divorce clients, only because I made a joke about being the only attorney at the Eminem concert. And I think the same goes, like, tenfold with therapists, that I think therapists are afraid to tell people what they do for a living because then everyone’s going to respond with the oh, are you analyzing me? Or, what do you think about me? Or, what are you observing? The more people that know what you do for a living, the more chances that those people are going to have to send you business.

[JOE]:
I love that. That’s so awesome. I think people sometimes shy away from that. I know I definitely did when I was getting a haircut, because then I would be giving a half-hour of free therapy, oftentimes, but the idea of just making sure that people know what you do, that’s such a great point. Randy, if people want to get a hold of you, if they want to connect with you, if they want to hear more about your work, what’s the best way for them to connect with you?

[RANDY]:
Yeah, my website is very easy, amicabledivorce.com, which I think says a lot about the way I practice and has a lot of information about what I do. They can also reach me by phone, if I could, you know, that’s 248-584-0400. And I am more than happy, whether your listeners are in Michigan or not, I am – because I do believe in the kind of givers game theory that if people have questions for me about what I do – I’m more than happy to take a few minutes on the phone or respond to an email to give them advice, because I’ve kind of gone to many people over my life, and reached out, and asked similar questions of people like that.

[JOE]:
Awesome. Well, Randy, thank you so much for being on the Practice of the Practice podcast.

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[JOE]:
So are you going to get involved in the collaborative divorce scene? Are you going to start working with attorneys and getting more referrals? I hope if this feels like something that you might want to do that you do jump in because there’s so much opportunity there to get connected in the collaborative divorce community. Also, today, TherapyNotes is our sponsor. TherapyNotes is the number one electronic health records for therapists. We get so many emails from people talking about how glad they are that they signed up with TherapyNotes, that they’re doing their telehealth through TherapyNotes. They just blow other platforms out of the water. Also, they have live support. I mean, lots of other places, they don’t have any live support. They don’t have any people that you can actually talk to. You just have to submit a ticket and hope that it gets taken care of. That’s not what you want with an EHR. You want to have live support. TherapyNotes has that. They have so many other features that I could just go on and on about, but they really are the best EHR out there. So head on over to therapynotes.com, enter promo code JOE to get a couple months for free. And if you are a Next Level Practice member, that’s our membership community, you get six months for free when you sign up the first time with TherapyNotes. Just forward that receipt to me, I forward it on to the TherapyNotes team. They don’t have a code for it because it’s just too valuable. We’re the only ones they give a six month free trial to. So make sure that if you’re in Next Level Practice you take advantage of that as well. So thank you so much for letting me into your ears and into your brain.

Our next episode kind of dovetails nicely with this collaborative divorce. We’re having Susan Orenstein who she just launched the After the First Marriage podcast. She’s a therapist, and she’s one of our podcasters with the Practice of the Practice Podcast Network, such a great podcast offering help around that after that first marriage, you know, there’s so much help for marriage and getting through divorce, but then what happens when you’re actually divorced? She has a podcast that is the authoritative response to help you after the first marriage. So we’re gonna be talking to her on Thursday. So looking forward to talking more to you. Have an awesome week and a couple of days here. I’ll talk to you soon. Bye.

Special thanks to the band Silence is Sexy for your intro music; we really like it. This podcast is designed to provide accurate, authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical or other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.