Services

We work with our clients to build bridges across law, healthcare, and community, drawing on many strategic partners, including attorneys, consultants, healthcare providers, coaches and thought leaders.

As lawyers, we facilitate and support non-adversarial, collaborative practices in order to avoid, whenever possible, adverse medical events by starting from a place of conversation, open exchange, and shared decision-making, setting a tone of calm, respectful exchange.  We also assist healthcare practioners when adverse medical events do inevitably occur.

We work with healthcare practitioners and attorneys, separately and together, to

• create shared meaning through clear, concise language that leads to aligned action;
• consider useful responses to adverse medical events;
• enhance communication skills with patients and families;
• become well-versed in aternatives to litigation; 
• consider new ways of working with other professions; and
• consider expanded communication with patients and families.
• bringing new ways of thinking to representation of healthcare professionals; 
• new ways of languaging our work;
• new approaches to conversing with clients;
• dialogue with other professions and interested persons in new possibilities for responses after advese medical event; 
• new approaches to representing healthcare providers

We work with our clients, in both healthcare and law, to design and deliver trainings that work for both professions in the hope of creating a cultural shift from an adversarial to a more healing process, one that promotes improved healthcare through listening, learning and working together.   For example, our training and consulting work involve attorneys and physicians, learning together about collaborative practices, enhanced communication, transparency, non-adversarial language, and disclosure.   Another approach we use is to facilitate dialogue among various stakeholders.    For instance, if we are working to build community collaborations, we invite community members, volunteers, healthcare practitioners, social service workers, insurers, attorneys, and the like to bring their values, experience, and ideas to the conversation.

These formats are intended, in part, to open channels of communication between physicians and attorneys, who, historically, have often been adversaries, to overcome misunderstandings, to understand adverse medical events and other healthcare-related concerns from many perspectives, and to begin to build a sense of community. We view both processes as building communities of cooperation.

Dr. Clark's expertise derives from, among other things, the extensive inquiry underlying her dissertation, which examined the special suitability of collaborative process, versus litigation, for use after adverse medical events

A process for healing for ALL the parties through respectful listening, answering questions, supporting each other, offering apology, and offering compensation, when appropriate, with counsel from attorneys.  

• Tort law is adversarial by nature; a culture of safety is collaborative.  
  • There is an almost total disconnect between medical malpractice litigation and patient safety 

• Multidisciplinary professional development/continuing conversation builds community, trust and understanding
• Components:

      - Informed Patient Choice

       - Use of language  

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  • Disclosure conversations
  • Dialogue and open exchange
  • Patients and physicians discussing patient safety issues and solutions
• Explore the use of dialogue to bring all stakeholders together to develop trust and community and discuss options to traditional medical malpractice litigation. 

• The dialogue process:
  • Builds community
  • Builds trust
  • Creates conversational space
  • Breaks down assumptions
  • Creates opportunities for shared thinking and new ideas
  • Integrates multiple perspectives
  • Creates the space for understanding and healing

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We work together with our clients to design and deliver trainings that work for all professionals.  For example, one approach is to design overlapping trainings in which attorneys and physicians train together to learn about both collaborative law, collaborative practices, and disclosure.   Another approach we use is to facilitate dialogue among various stakeholders.    For instance, if we are working to build community collaborations, we invite community members, volunteers, healthcare practitionedrs, social service workers, insurers, attorneys, and the like.  These formats are  intended, in part, to open channels of communication between physicians and attorneys, who, historically, have often been adversaries, to overcome misunderstandings, to understand adverse medical events and other healthcare-related concerns from many perspectives, and to begin to build a sense of community. We view both processes as building communities of cooperation.