Whatcom Collaborative Professionals July Member’s Meeting -
Le Quatorze Juillet (7/14/14), in the Juvenile Court Administration Conference Room (Behind the locked doors of Suite 501, in the room with all the peppy positive “I will not punch my friends in the face” posters), Whatcom County Courthouse 311 Grand Avenue.
From 12:00 p.m. Collaborative Time to Whenever it was finally determined that sitting in a poorly ventilated room in the middle of what we bog-creature-Northwesterners determine as an intolerable heat wave was just not the ideal July activity when there was ice cream in which to bury one’s face/head/feet/whatever just down the street… and/or work to do in an air conditioned office.
Members Sweating it out to the Oldies: Roy Martin, Pat Henderson, Penny Henderson (no relation, except being soul sistahs of another mistah), Patrick Gallery, Adella Wright, Pam Englett, Mimi Mawson, Kira Lieberman, Robert Kelly, Chris Taylor, Kathryn Resnick
Absent with (we can only assume) regrets: Kathy Westover, Laura Weight, Eric Weight, Shannon Montoure, Betsy Brinson, Leon Henley, Sandy Voit
Absent with (most definitely) regrets: Mike Guerrero, who is recovering from back surgery, and is unable to drive. Patrick purportedly knew about this, but didn't want to spoil the mood for everyone else, so we were left assuming Mike had merely skipped the country for a pleasure cruise in Tahiti.
Eternally damned to stagger through the labyrinth of nesting courthouse rooms in her own personal reenactment of Kafka’s The Meeting : Sandra Andress, who has now undergone the first hazing rituals of new membership: finding our room! Unaware, as she may be, that (1) Collaborative Time is discounted by at least 5-10 minutes, so even if she’d found the right room, nobody would have been there and it probably would have looked like the wrong room anyways (2) the entry to the conference room automatically locks at non-Collaborative Noon, thus often necessitating some additional 12:06 (or 11:55 a.m. Collaborative Time) shuffling about to get into the actual room, (3) Sargeant Pepper and his Lonely Heart’s Club Band of Hendersons were lurking in the wings humming ragas and dreaming of Cambodia, (4) The Whatcom County Courthouse was built over an ancient racoon burial ground, and strange things happen in these room...
Henceforth, peradventure, members might arrange to meet with Sandra downstairs and escort her up for the September meeting, because locating and reaching the meeting room is most certainly a Borgesian affair not to be undertaken by the faint of heart at peril of madness. And, while Patrick does look great in a minotaur get-up, we just don’t know when David Bowie will pop in and turn the entire fifth floor into an Escher painting while crooning about dance magic and waving around a baby. This just gets confusing!
Special guest-star: Raspberry the giant stuffed tiger. While taciturn, he brought an air of wisdom from his perch in the far corner chair.
Additional special guest toy: Adella’s handheld “air conditioner”, a thrifty pink fan/sponge device attached to her computer and capable of creating untold depths of additional humidity if properly used. Not sufficient to banish her heat sensitivity altogether, but certainly a soothing bit of white noise for the duration of her stay at the meeting.
In the beginning of the Kira and Adella’s Collaborative Empire… It was 12:10 Non-Collaborative time and thus just a little early to start in Collaborative Time, but we forged ahead anyways. President Patrick unfurled the mighty agenda… or board meeting minutes... or recipe for vegan borscht (which - according to somebody’s husband - is too weird to finish because it’s “sweet like ice cream, and cold like ice cream, but is NOT! Ice! Cream!”, not that Mallards wouldn't try a beet, tomato, and kale ice cream sorbet just for kicks). Whatever Patrick had, it was more paper than anyone else had, at least. A few attorneys had the actual agenda up on their cell phones, but there wasn’t too much to address and Adella (or was it Kira? These women board members all look alike to me!) had the couple of issues emblazoned in her cerebral cortex anyhow.
And thus the meeting commenced with only a few more minutes of fanfare and dancing elephants.
1. Adella - Kira - Kira - Adella … Which Empress is which??
Adella is not nine month’s pregnant. She’s pretty sure of this. If if she is, there’s gonna be a pretty scathing review on amazon of certain testing products, and a lawsuit to cover the costs of Prince Florimund’s (her imaginary child-surrogate sphynx cat’s) intensive family therapy. She’s fairly certain that she is also not married to Roy, seeing as she just celebrated a wedding anniversary with some other dude in bike shorts who doesn't like beet ice cream. She doesn't think she’s a polygamist, but has been wrong before. (For instance: once upon a time, she thought she didn't like cilantro, and now she eats it straight with bovine grazing mode set to devour). Her mental health experience is also fairly limited to obsessive omphaloskepsis, and armchair diagnoses of friends with various Jungian metaphors having something to do with the crucifixion, the shadow self, and the zodiac as represented in medieval alchemy.
Kira is nine months pregnant with the collaborative progeny of WCP glory. Being the president elect and once having served a turn at the ol’ notebook, she has little to no designs on the secretarial position. Her soul is far too pure and intact to ever pass the final testing stages of the Washington State Bar admittance application process. And given her statements about Targeting Lawyers made in the July 2014 meeting, she may, in fact, be the dreaded Attorney Slayer of legend. I believe she is married to Roy. If not, then Roy’s wife is gonna be super jealous, because I've seen them canoodling and it is scandalous!
The other members of the board include Mike, Rob, and Patrick, who are also not (to my knowledge) pregnant at all.
This all sorted out, onto the agenda for the day…
2. October - IACP versus Training versus Retreat versus Monster Truck Show Outing
October 2014 has an embarrassment of potential riches for the group. It will be our Open Meeting of 2014. It has also been slated at the time for our WCP Member training, and in June we added on considerations of participating in the IACP Forum in Vancouver on October 24-26th.
The board had decreed it needed a definite showing of interest from the group to make attendance a WCP priority. With sufficient commitment to the IACP Forum (and the gnawing realization that no concrete steps have been taken towards putting together a training, aside from some very witty banter on the behalf of the official Training Committee, AND we don't have a meeting in August AND we have an open meeting in October), the board recommended postponing our local training until Spring of 2015.
Roy (who is a member of the training committee and thus may have had some stake in this option) was a strong proponent of attending the IACP. While he has not previously had the opportunity to attend, he is blown away by the wealth of educational opportunities, some of which are spot-on issue with things our group has been struggling with. He plans to attend both the forum and the pre-forums on Thursday and Friday. Others who have expressed intent to attend include Laura, Eric, and Kira. Several others have been interested but commitment-shy.
CLE Credits? One of the reservations expressed by the group is that the Forum does not automatically qualify for CLE credits. Given that the minimum costs run between $500-$600+ and a weekend of time & travel, it would be hard for some to put out additional expenses on the usual CLEs required by the WSBA. Plus, we like our darned ethics credits! Or is it the free fruit plates, coffee, and stale cookies that they put out during the ethics sections? One of those, we like.
There is a way to apply for CLE credits either as a group prospectively, or retrospectively by individuals. This takes a certain amount of legwork, as Laura can attest from our prior training (speaking of issues not quite addressed for any upcoming group training). Roy offered to take on the application process, but specified that it would require requesting credit for specific forum workshops, instead of the forum as a whole.
(According to my notes) Christ has had positive experiences getting CLE credits (I should hope so, although what the son of god is doing with us shysters, one daren’t imagine).
Roy has currently offered to look into the specific process for members to get CLE credits if they attend before the Early Bird Discount date of August 25th.
Head Count on the IACP:
Full credit: Roy + Kira + Laura + Eric + Pat + Patrick + Chris = 7
Partial credit (definitely leaning towards maybe going): Rob + Kathryn + Betsy + Adella + Pam = 5, counting for 2.5
Zero credit Definitely not going: Kathy + Mike + Shannon = 0 (not a personal judgment, just math)
Wildcards: Leon + Mimi + Sandra + Sandy = ummmm let’s say 0.5
7 + 2.5 + 0.5 = 10!!!!
And with that, the IACP Conference is a go, and (breathe a sigh of relief my hearty Peppers) the training shall be postponed!
Post-Forum Retreat to Move Forward? As an alternative to a formal training, the group had previously discussed sponsoring an informal retreat shortly after the IACP Training. This would allow those who attended the IACP Forum to share what they've learned (Driving in Vancouver is a Nightmare!! Starbucks still outnumbers Tim Horton’s by a slim margin, but Peet’s is kinda surprisingly ubiquitous! Pizza at McDonalds??)
In respect for people’s busy schedules, Kira proposed keeping it to a half-day. Mike Guerrero had previously offered use of his studio for the event.
Additional logistics could be re-delegated to the P. Hendersons and Roy to include a more limited scope of: (1) food, (2) time, (3) whether we just wanna admit that we're sitting atop Halloween anyways and sponsor our retreat in costume, bob for collaborative apples, and kit up the pretty new studio into a wicked haunted house!!! I’ve seen what Penny can do with Seahawks fever, so it would be pretty amazing.
Kathryn suggested we look into using doodle for scheduling purposes. This creates a program so all members can respond with their available dates and times to find the optimal retreat time.
Where things stand:
1. The group agrees it is fun to go to the IACP and we'd like to go to the IACP.
2. The theoretical October training is now a theoretical spring training. The 2015 Board will take this up.
3. A mini retreat will occur like in November. Logistics will be addressed at the September Meeting.
II. Advertising
After the photo quagmire of 2012, our group has been committing $75 dollars a month to run said totally outdated member photo in the “Whatcom Bar Newsletter”. The newsletter is an online rag for local attorneys that is emailed out on a monthly basis.
Sandy Voit had questioned whether this was an efficient commitment of $900 dollars.
The group discussed and affirmed that being known in the legal community is an important element of building Collaborative Law. Some get direct referrals, while others opine that just being seen in a cursory way allows this weird little thing we do to be normalized. Others of us just really like seeing our pictures in print and Facebook alone cannot sate our boundless narcissism.
While we agree there is an ongoing “education problem” in the legal community, the specific avenue pursued seems to have run its course.
The scads of members who also advertise in the bar news admit that they also have been thinking about dropping their ad, but are stymied by entropy. Perhaps this will start a revolution!
The group voted unanimously to stop using up the newsletter’s valuable advertising space so that Rajeev can enlarge his ramblings of a small-town lawyer to rival War and Peace in serialized duration and scope.
As a free (and therefore appealing) alternative: Kira suggested that members instead write personalized vignettes about the process of a collaborative case. There were some concerns about confidentiality, given the size of the community. Even a hypothetical could be taken personally (as somebody who tried her hand at short stories back in her angsty teenage days, trust me, everyone is so vain they think anything written is about them - You all probably think that these minutes have something to do with you, for instance! Admit it!). We have previously submitted articles to the bar newsletter, though Kira believes something more personal would be more appealing. Members are welcome and encouraged to submit in the interim.
Rob wanted to make certain that we would choose an alternative marketing focus, given that this is our sole remaining form of outreach. Given the dormancy (it’s not dead yet!... really… kinda… maybe) of the marketing committee, we will address alternative marketing ideas at the September meeting.
Initial Proposals for Alternative Forms of Advertising:
1. Cute pictures of kittens cuddling with a sloth instead of the 2012 photo.
2. A $200 for $500 worth of Collaborative Divorce Dealsavers and/or Special Divorce Punchcards for Repeat Clients
3. Collaborative Divorce Promotional Contest. Entrants will be tasked with making a youtube video about why they want to enter the collaborative process. One lucky winner will be given a free Financial Professional Upgrade in their collaborative dissolution.