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WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR ME LATELY?
In this edition of the Collaborative Pulse, I am highlighting some of the current benefits FACP is providing our members and practice groups. And this is only what is happening now, in addition to the constant and continuing activities of FACP that promote our practices to the public, professionals and judiciary.
DIVORCE WITH RESPECT WEEK
FACP has paid for the license to allow our members to participate in Divorce with Respect Week, March 1-8. This is an outstanding marketing tool to educate the general public about Collaborative Divorce. Participation is voluntary by our members and I highly recommend signing up by going to our website. It will take just a couple of minutes of your time and costs you nothing! Your obligation is to provide no more than (3) one-half hour consultations at no charge, which may lead to clients. Thank you, Carlos Gutierrez and his committee for promoting this. Several practice groups have secured proclamations from their city which is a great way to get free press coverage and promotion of collaborative practice. I hope each practice group will encourage members to sign up for this golden opportunity to promote Collaborative. Please contact Carlos with any questions and join in our state-wide marketing efforts to promote and educate the public on Collaborative Law.
DIVORCE OPTIONS
Divorce Options in Florida is alive and growing. We need more people trained and qualified to present the workshop. It is a way of acquiring new collaborative clients as well as educating potential clients who attend these sessions looking for answers dealing with divorce. Training is easy and can be done from the comfort of your desk. Please contact Carina Leeson for information on how to participate.
ADR SECTION RECOGNITION
The ADR Section of the Florida Bar has officially recognized Collaborative Law as a new committee of their Section. Thank you goes to Keith Grossman for spearheading this effort. Becoming a new committee of the Section is huge as it officially provides us a seat at the table of the Bar’s Dispute Resolution Section. Keith is the head of the committee overseeing our activities with the Section. He is looking for additional members to join his committee and become active in this ADR Section Committee.
WEBINAR FOR FAMILY LAW LITIGATORS
The cost of everything is going up and FACP committed a lot of resources to have a presence with a table at the Annual AAML Family Law Cert Review course this year. We had a fantastic showing of volunteers for our table from all three collaborative disciplines. Our table was excellently placed for high activity from the attendees. Thank you to our volunteers who staffed our table.
That is but step one in our process of marketing collaborative to family law litigators. Our Outreach committee is now putting on a webinar on March 27 at noon for many of those cert review attendees, designed to educate family law lawyers who have yet to be trained and who are largely unfamiliar with the Collaborative Law Process. Sheila Furr, Abigail Cohen, Marta Alfonso and Robert Merlin will provide a webinar busting myths and educating the non-collaborative family lawyers to help build memberships in local practice groups.
VIRTUAL CONFERENCE
You all should have had several announcements for registration for our first ever Virtual Conference. We begin on March 13, move to April 10 and then May 8 with live virtual presentations. And, as a bonus, for those who register for the entire Conference package, a 90-minute interactive live virtual Ethics presentation will be provided on March 15. In addition, the presentations will be available until July for private viewing, and CLE and CE credits, for those who are unable to attend on the date of the live presentation. Watch parties are being planned, with Jacksonville and Boca hosting their own watch parties on March 13. We will provide over 10 hours of education for which we will apply for CLE and CE credits for our members.
COST FACTOR
We, the Board of FACP, have registered your concerns about increasing dues for FACP. This was the first time in ten years that FACP has increased its dues. We are a volunteer organization and there are many collaborative professionals who are very generous with their time. The reality is that in addition to the many hours of volunteerism required, outreach efforts such as divorce options and the table at cert review cost money. And the cost of many of these activities has increased in just the past two years. FACP is committed to continuing in its efforts to promote collaborative and educate the professionals and public on Collaborative Law, with a view of growing all of our practices in the most cost efficient way possible.
I hope that you can help us convey to your members the value from what we are doing.
TO PRACTICE GROUP LEADERS
I just attended the FACP Practice Group meeting and am concerned about the lack of participation by the practice group leaders around the state. Thank you for those in attendance. I welcome conversation with those of you who did not attend. These meetings are another way for you to get information to provide to your members about the exciting programs and events occurring via FACP as well as a way for us to hear from you on a regular basis what it is that you need or want from FACP. Please mark your calendars for the third Wednesday of each month at noon. If you cannot make it, we welcome any representative from your PG to attend these meetings. Providing the information to your members is another way of keeping your members informed and involved.
I look forward to seeing you on our Virtual Conference presentation.
Jeff Wasserman,
FACP President
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