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From our perspectives as students, we reflect on the teachings of Lawyer as Peacemaker, a Winter 2015 course taught at UCLA School of Law — the school's course devoted to peacemaking lawyering. Utilizing our newfound peacemaking worldview, we share our collective reactions to the Lawyer as Peacemaker course and the ten articles in the Family Court Review Special Issue on Peacemaking for Divorcing Families. We then advocate for integrating peacemaking into law school curricula and experiential learning offerings and make recommendations on how law schools today can prepare students to practice peace. Key Points for the Family Court Community: This article is a collaborative work product of three students who come from an array of work experience, backgrounds and interests and from their newly founded peacemaking worldview, the three students collaboratively analyzed ideas presented in the Lawyer as Peacemaker course and the articles from this issue. The peacemaking mediation allows the parties more control over their legal disputes and allows the control of the costs that come with litigation. Peacemaking involves a holistic and collaborative method, involving mental health professionals to financial advisors as well as legal professionals. However, peacemaking skill courses are not readily available to many law students while studying in law school. This valuable asset should be made available more extensively to law students interested in family law.

Peacemaking is particularly challenging in family conflicts. Deeply held feelings about identity, fair treatment, moral issues, and protecting social capital often cause people in conflict to make self-defeating decisions. There are, however, techniques that enable mediators, Collaborative Practice professionals, and other peacemakers to overcome the settlement barriers created by these strongly held views. These techniques include those pioneered by psychotherapists using the Internal Family Systems model, which enables parties to see that their strongly held views comprise only part of the constellation of feelings that they have about the conflict. Key Points for the Family Court Community: Parents who feel that their role as father or mother is in danger often find it difficult to focus on the children's best interests. The “rule of reciprocity” causes people who feel wronged to exact even harsher punishment on those who harmed them. The concept of “social capital” explains why people care so passionately about whether they are treated fairly and about their reputation for fairness. The Internal Family Systems model helps peacemakers to understand how to work with the parties’ ambivalence about settlement versus courtroom vindication.

Unbundling, also known as limited-scope representation, has been adopted by judges, the organized legal profession, and divorcing parties. Unbundling is a legal access approach to better and more affordably serve unrepresented divorce litigants as well as to assist overburdened and underfunded courts. This article will focus on another critical benefit of unbundling: the ability of divorcing professionals to provide information and support to divorcing families to help reduce family conflicts. This article shall discuss four unbundled peacemaking roles that lawyers can play: (1) Collaborative Lawyer; (2) Lawyer Coach for Self-Represented Litigants; (3) Lawyer for Mediation Participants; and (4) Preventive Legal Health Care Provider. Key Points for the Family Court Community: Overview of limited-scope lawyering roles Impact of unbundled representation on peacemaking Best practices of noncourt lawyering

Peace (wholeness and integrity) is to be sought as the highest goal in the divorce process, affecting not only the divorcing couple but their family and community as well. The value of “community” found in the three major Western religious traditions suggests that more than just the immediate family should be involved in crafting divorce settlements and that the involvement of clergy may aid in the divorce process, especially in providing rich religious metaphors and exempla to promote peaceful negotiations. Other religious values such as “humanity in the divine image,” “love,” and “the fullness of time” can be useful in working with the divorcing couple to allow their stories to be told, provide time to sort out their complex emotions, and help reduce the impulse to see the other solely as an enemy to be eliminated in battle. “Sin and atonement” can serve an important role in restorative justice, while “the delayed arrival of the divine kingdom” provides a reasonable way to assess what determines success, both for the divorcing couple and for divorce professionals. Key Points for the Family Court Community: Religious values found in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam can be consciously utilized to help divorcing couples separate more peacefully. Providing opportunities for each spouse to be fully heard and seen is a crucial component in helping to bring more peace into the divorce process.

This article explores alternatives for the court process that promote a child-centered approach to resolution of family law issues including a summary of procedures used in Los Angeles County to assist families. The article also explores alternatives to the traditional custody litigation model. Key Points for the Family Court Community: Evaluations and trials are not the only tools available in family law. Structured court ordered counseling can provide a meaningful intervention and reduce family conflict. Alternative forms of mediation can help families address the “need to be heard” and retain personal autonomy in decision making. The court system should help educate families about how to resolve conflict in a safe, effective, and meaningful way.

Interdisciplinary teams provide an unparalleled opportunity for peacemaking in families within the consensual dispute resolution continuum. This interdisciplinary environment was born out of the integration of Collaborative Law, in which lawyers limit the scope of their services to settlement by way of a signed agreement, and Collaborative Divorce, a team approach to divorce services that includes a lawyer for each party along with a Collaborative Divorce Coach for each party, a neutral financial specialist, and a neutral child specialist. Taken together, Interdisciplinary Collaborative Practice supports the resolution of legal issues out of court as well as addressing any emotional, relational, or behavioral problems that create obstacles to the successful resolution of the separation process. Key Points for the Family Court Community: Collaborative Practice creates legal representation in a consensual environment limiting services to settlement negotiations by way of a written agreement. The International Academy of Collaborative Professionals includes 5,000 members in twenty-five countries. Legal representation in a consensual environment together with interdisciplinary teams create endless possibilities for dispute resolution processes. Collaborative Lawyers, Collaborative Divorce Coaches, child specialists, and financial specialists can create custom-fit interdisciplinary teams that work together out of court to support families through marital transition. Interdisciplinary teams are family centric, bridging appropriate disciplines and resources to the needs of the family to address the vast majority of divorce-related problems. Divorcing families are moving targets, learning and evolving through the process. Therapeutic teams support families with more complex relational, emotional, and mental health problems to find resolutions out of court. Divorce is a mainstream event in Western culture; we need supportive processes to encourage the best possible outcomes for all family members, especially the children.