People Centered Law Bringing Life Back to Lawyer - Client Relations Through Collaborative Lawyering

The purpose of this action research was to describe how a lawyer’s clients experienced her approach to collaborative lawyering, and to examine the relationship between collaborative lawyering and collaborative learning. Dialogic interviews were used to gain rich descriptions of client experiences. A thematic analysis of data identified patterns in the interview descriptions of their interactions with the lawyer. Results showed that the collaborative lawyer’s relationship with her clients could be understood in such terms as caring, equality of position, honesty and trust, sense of value, and freedom to speak. These attributes of the collaborative lawyer-client relationship were in part enabled by life stories told by clients about such matters as abuse of power, discrimination, family life and fairness. The collaborative relationship between lawyer and client is essential; however, the technical aspects are equally important and cannot be ignored in the praxis of law. The findings suggested that collaborative lawyering and collaborative learning have much in common, especially as both rely on a dialogical space and place for learning and decision making, as well as on trust and mutual respect for the lived experience of participants. The findings are discussed against the backdrop of prevailing systems of legal training and other legal traditions. The study is seen as contributing to a small but growing area of literature that speaks to alternative ways of lawyering and to the nature of lawyer-client relationships.