| home "Let's share client emails" Ron Romines said to Michael Lowy. Mike agreed. What do the CA Rules of Professional Conduct say about this? CLICK HERE "We don't need to follow the law", Mike and Ron said over and over again. I was in collaborative with Mike. He stopped talking to me. He would not answer phone calls or emails. This went on for seven (documented) months. Then, when he mysteriously began communicating again, he would not pay attention to what was going on. He knew I had a money judgment from the divorce and told me it would be best to let my ex take the money and buy a house. And so he did. Listen to Mike talk about being in control of your divorce and remember what happened to me. When he returned the file to me, he also returned communications with Ron Romines showing they had shared private client emails. Trust the judge. Mike says not to, but he is wrong. They may not follow the law either, but at least you can appeal. In collaborative, you have NOTHING to document what is going on. Why is there no court reporter? Why is your collabprative attorney taking hand written notes? Who is going to tell you the law? Not Michael Lowy who says, "We don't have to follow the law." from more on Mike Lowy see Michael Lowy |
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IS MICHAEL LOWY? He's a Palo Alto attorney that wants you to hire him. The half hour free consultation is his time to market himself. Go ahead. Hear what he has to say. And ask him about the client emails shared with opposing counsel. He will tell you what you want to hear. In that respect he isn't any different than most attorneys. But Michael sells a package deal of honesty, ethics, transparency and trust. And then he ditches them for expediency. Michael Lowy was my attorney who shared private client emails with opposing counsel in violation of attorney-client privilege. Unwrapping ethical quaqmires wasn't something I started out to do, but my naivete kept bumping into more and more of them and this book is the result of finding out what they were, why they exist and why we don't recognze them. Why do lawyers lie? why do they cheat their clients and abscond with money they don't earn? Why do they act as they do? How can Michael's sense of entitlement overwhelm his values and character? Are all attorneys doomed to treat their clients as I was treated? Over the past five years I have interviewed over one hundred people about their legal situations. Since I wrote my first book it appears things have become worse. And collaborative law is making attorneys wealthy as it thumbs its nose at the law itself. The story is being revised for Insider Secrets of Collaborative Law. from Insider Secrets of Collaborative Law (in process) by Ann Bradley The Collaborative Myth: "With collaborative practice, the clients are in control, not some judge or the lawyers," (Steven) Popell said. "The husband and wife are making the decisions at every stage.". If Mr Popell were to look at the communications between myself and Michael Lowy he would see this simply doesn't translate into practice. One of Michael Lowy's clients communicated with me for quite a while about her sessions, and told me of her despair and deep unhappiness. Apparently everyone in the group discussed THEIR agenda and THEIR perceptions of what the issues and she was left out. If she brought up issues, she was told by the collaborative counterpart, "Oh, we'll get back to that." And they never did. Michael Lowy always talked about trust. He wanted very badly to believe in himself and in the process of collaborative law. When I called to talk and discuss a problem, his response was "Ann, let the process work." Oy vey, Michael, what a cop out. The process is nothing, people are everything. But collaborative is easy on the attorney as compared to going to court and all that entails in procedure and preparation. Michael says in the video there is a lot of discretion in family law. No, not really. The law is the law. What there is, is abuse of discretion. Not Every Lawyer Likes Collaborative Ronalda Murphy, Ph.D., Harvard School of Law, and constitutional scholar confronts head on the problems of collaborative law. According to Murphy, it demonizes law, sacrifices "just outcomes for the sake of efficiency" and ignores the problems of a power imbalance. ("Is The Turn Toward Collaborative Law A Turn Away From Justice?"). I find that it increases power imbalances. A Santa Clara County attorney has a similar opinion. He believes collaborative is unfair to women since it is marketed to appeal to their sense of fairness and natural dislike of adversarial issues at the same time they have a great need for strong advocacy for economic reasons. He says that in most cases men have been in charge of finances, women are naive and might not realize assets have been hidden, and collaborative, with its win-win, touchy feely, do discovery if you feel like it, but no one cares if you don't - allows the continued dominance of the male to control finances. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIVORCE: THE REAL TRUTH, THE HIDDEN DANGERS, Surviving Deception, Betrayal, and Narcissism available on Amazon Betrayed by lawyers, betrayed by my spouse. I fought back and I won... this is my story of being conned and manipulated, lied to and falling apart until there was no more down to go to. So I found my optimism genes, picked myself up, read case law, wrote motions, wrote an appeal and won. BUY the book here: AMAZON Excerpt: WHAT’S IN A NAME? Originally this book did not name names. There is no reason not to do so now. Opposing counsel was Jeffrey Kaufman of Palo Alto, CA. My trial court attorney was Patrick Hall who was ethical and kind to the core. My first attorney was Anne di Maria Cone. Kirby Burnside was also in my case. Post appeal I wandered into the hall of mirrors of collaborative law and met Michael Lowy and Ron Romines who shared privileged client emails with each other. They have been reported to the California State Bar. Many thanks to the knight in shining armor of the legal world, legal consultant Roy Re. Integrity, intelligence and compassion are his guiding lights. Attorney Cynthia Spencer was my pro tem judge who actually listened. And understood. Thank you. My Judge was Katherine Lucero who also listened. Jim was my husband and the father of Jamie. He has become a good father. I don’t forgive him for what he did during the divorce but honor him for the changes he made. (2009) MORE: Events will take their course, it is no good our being angry at them; he is happiest who wisely turns them to the best account. Euripides I tell my friends my high conflict millennium spanning divorce has been a gift. Sometimes I say it to make myself believe it to be true. Sometimes I say it because I need to find life lessons in this experience. But during the divorce I said it to keep from going crazy. Often I would wake up, shaking, mind racing, burdened with sorrow, sadness and rage at how the divorce was taking on a destructive, cruel life of its own. I felt as if it had found its way into my DNA, replicating with vigor at every new tactic and maneuver. . Cut me and no, I did not bleed, but declarations, objections, orders to show cause, interrogatories, responsive declarations, more interrogatories, settlement conference statements, and pre trial briefs poured forth. I thought a nervous breakdown was only a heartbeat away. I would lie in bed and talk to my neurons, "Fire, engage, kick in for god's sake." I'd wonder if I could talk myself into not going insane. Could I hard wire my brain back to normal? Could I live through this waking nightmare? I could and I did, though someone watching me crush my vitamins between my teeth instead of swallowing them might detect a woman with enormous stress overload. I made it through. Or I think I did. According to the American Heart Association the rate of heart attacks in divorced women is 30% higher than average. I certainly understand that. When the stress first hit I ended up in the emergency room with crushing chest pain. After a year and a half of dealing with my husband's attorney who slept through Ethics and How to Negotiate, I sometimes have pain in my chest and the statistics from the Heart Association stick in my mind. Divorce as a gift? I'd rather have cash or a shopping spree at Nordstrom's. But then again, maybe not. I like the person who arrived on the other side of this divorce. The cash and clothes are used and gone But the transformation remains. In his book, Waking the Tiger, Peter Wren says: "Every trauma provides an opportunity for authentic transformation. Trauma amplifies and evokes the expansion and contraction of psyche, body and soul....If we let it, trauma has the power to rob our lives of vitality and destroy it. However we can also use it for powerful self-renewal and transformation. Trauma, resolved, is a blessing from a greater power." |
