As a collaborative family lawyer, I am always grateful for any article that highlights the benefits for those who choose collaboration's consensual roundtable approach over the traditional adversarial process.


But I would like to knock one oft-repeated story on the head once and for all. In 'Keeping it in the family' (see [2007] Gazette, 18 October, 18), we were told that the family court in the Canadian town of Medicine Hat had closed down because so many cases have been resolved collaboratively since local practitioners adopted the process in August 2000. This tale is repeated, as a fact, throughout many articles and websites devoted to collaborative law. However much we might want it to be true, it is an urban myth. The Medicine Hat Family & Youth Provincial Court still operates, albeit with fewer cases than before.



While collaboration is undoubtedly where a bright future lies, it is not a universal panacea. There will continue to be a number of low-functioning, high-conflict individuals, incapable of reaching agreements, and for whom some measure of court intervention will always be necessary.



The Medicine Hat myth is a comforting one, but, dare I say it, it is really snake oil.



Stephen Anderson, Birketts, Ipswich