Session 1: Practice Management & Business Skills

Handling Volatile Clients in Family Law

In an area of law that is already heightened with emotion, family lawyers can often be faced with difficult clients: they may be excessively needy, overly aggressive, or a combination of both. This session provides best practice strategies in managing difficult clients, including:

• The written agreement on client practitioner interaction
• Maintaining a professional relationship with the client
• Some red flags to watch – recognizing the manipulative, needy client
• Managing toxic or aggressive behaviour
• Key management strategies:

• Managing communication and response expectations
• Explain difference between urgent and non-urgent
• Setting a precedent to reinforce boundaries
• Being selective on clients

• Managing client expectation where client exhibits excessive list of wants
• Knowing when to ‘pull the plug’ on the client

Session 2: Ethics

Negotiations and Determining When to Settle: Walking the Ethical Tightrope

All may be fair in love and war, but when do negotiation tactics cross the line into an ethical breach? This session looks at the ethical dimensions of negotiations and entering into settlements in family law matters. It includes:

• Understanding the ethics of adversarial practice and their impact on settlement
• Ethical guidelines for entering settlement negotiations
• Should we view settlement negotiations as a game?  - the ethics consequences
• Some ethics issues in settlement negotiations::

• Fraudulent deception
• When silence is a problem
• Use of false material
• Obligation of disclosure

• Ethics issues in the settlement of complex litigation
• Is there an ethics issue in refusing to settle?

Session 3:  Professional Skills

For Richer and Poorer: Drafting Watertight Property Consent Orders

There are many advantages to settling disputes through consent orders, but there are also many potential pitfalls in drafting them. This session takes a deep-dive into the preparation and drafting of an application for and minutes of proposed orders for property and financial matters, including:

• When is a property consent order appropriate? Considerations from case law and other requirements
• Guidance for completing the consent order application – due diligence, disclosure and client co-operation
• Tips for setting out financial information clearly and concisely
• Essential matters for property orders and drafting advice, including:

• asset identification and allocation
• time limits for sale and distribution
• apportionment and responsibility for liabilities
• third party actions and consents

• When will a court decline to make a consent order and options for redrafting and reconsideration
• Cases and examples

Paul Fildes, Principal, Accredited Family Law Specialist, Taussig Cherrie Fildes Lawyers, Melbourne, Vic

Paul Fildes is an Accredited Family Law Specialist and has been practising in family law since 1983. He has been ranked as one of only nine lawyers in Australia and one of only five in Melbourne as Preeminent by Doyle's Guide in 2020 and 2021.

Paul Fildes was previously the head of Middletons’ Family Law Practice Group (now K&L Gates), which he merged with Taussig Cherrie & Associates in 2010, to become Taussig Cherrie Fildes. Taussig Cherrie Fildes is one of only seven family law firms in Australia and one of only five in Victoria ranked as "First Tier" in the Doyle's Guide to Leading Family & Divorce Law Firms 2021.

Paul specialises in large scale family law property litigation, complex Financial Agreements, de facto property cases and restructuring family property in a tax effective manner.

Barry Berger, Director, Accredited Family Law Specialist, Dignity.EDR, Melbourne, Vic

Barry Berger is a Family Law Accredited Specialist, a Mediator, Collaborative Lawyer and an AIFLAM Accredited Arbitrator.

This year together with Leon Berger, Barry established Dignity EDR - Effective Dispute Resolution and Dignity Legal, an initiative which specialises in out-of-court settlements and expert guidance in all relationship matters.

Throughout his 46 year career, Barry was the co-founder and Managing Partner of Berger Kordos Lawyers and prior to that he was the Head of the Family Law Department of Home Wilkinson Lowry which subsequently became HWLE.

Barry Berger is one of Australia’s most experienced family lawyers and is known in the profession for giving strategic legal advice in complex family law matters, an innovator in collaborative law and alternative dispute resolution, and a champion of value-priced offerings.

Jacky Campbell, Partner & Accredited Family Law Specialist, Forte Family Lawyers, Melbourne

Jacky has been working in family law for over 30 years. She is Accredited as a Specialist in Family Law with the Law Institute of Victoria.

Jacky is the consultant editor of Wolters-Kluwer Australian Family Law & Practice and contributing author to Wolters-Kluwer Australian Family Law & Practice to the Property, Spousal Maintenance, Financial Agreements, Maintenance Agreements, Procedure and Precedents tabs. She is author of several chapters in the Wolters-Kluwer Australian Master Family Law Guide. She is the author of the family law chapter in two Wolters-Kluwer Australian Superannuation publications.

Jacky is a Member of the Family Law Section of the Law Council of Australia, a Fellow of the International Academy of the Family Lawyers, and an Associate of the American Bar Association.

This webinar is suitable for lawyers practising in family law - Australia wide and it has been designed to deliver the 3 compulsory subject CPD units for the CPD year ending 31st March 2023.

Lawyers can claim 3 CPD units – 1 unit each for Practice Management, Ethics and Professional Skills.

WA lawyers – Please note that TEN is unable to verify your completion of recorded webinars to the Legal Practice Board of WA. TEN is an accredited provider.