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Lynette Berg Robe

Family Divorce Solutions Member Lynette Berg Robe Honored With Prestigious Spencer Brandeis Award

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Family Divorce Solutions Member Lynette Berg Robe Honored With Prestigious Spencer Brandeis Award

In recognition of her dedicated service to the Family Law community in Los Angeles County, Family Divorce Solutions of San Fernando Valley member Lynette Berg Robe was honored with the 2016 Spencer Brandeis Award by the Los Angeles County Bar Association Family Law Section.

This Award is presented, when deemed merited, to pay tribute to an individual who has had an extraordinary impact upon the advancement of family law by way of creative legal advocacy and commitment to the service of the family law community. It is the highest honor bestowed by the Los Angeles County Bar Association Family Law Section. Robe is among a select group of just two dozen attorneys recognized with award.

(Left to Right) (name), Lynette Berg Robe, and Hon. Thomas Trent Lewis, Judge of the Superior Court of California in Los Angeles. Photo: Leon Bennett
(Left to Right) Hon. Kathleen Thompson, Federal Bankruptcy Judge (Ret.), Lynette Berg Robe, and Hon. Thomas Trent Lewis, Judge of the Superior Court of California in Los Angeles. Photo: Leon Bennett

“Our courts are facing great challenges, being underfunded, with 70 percent of the litigants self-represented,” said Robe in her acceptance speech. “Out of court processes such as mediation and Collaborative Law are important in alleviating the pressure that has been created in the courts and in offering parties a generally less expensive and less hostile alternative process.

“All family law attorneys are involved in the same goal of helping clients and families in crisis through a difficult transition, legally and emotionally. We need to respect what each of us has to offer and understand that not every case needs to be treated the same. Some cases need to be litigated, and others need consensual dispute resolution. I have done both and have tried to fit the process to the parties.

“In any family law case, there is usually misery enough to go around, and the attorneys should not be adding to it. My final note: Let’s try to be kinder to each other as we engage in our common enterprise,” concluded Robe.

“Lynette’s award reflects the professional standards of excellence all our members across every discipline strive to achieve on behalf of our clients,” said Warren Sacks, president of Family Divorce Solutions. “We are so pleased to see such a strong advocate of Collaborative Practice recognized by the Los Angeles County Bar Association with this prestigious award.”

Lynette Berg Robe and husband Mike Robe at the Los Angeles County Bar Family Law Section Annual Awards. San Fernando Valley Divorce Attorney Encino call 818-933-4504
Lynette Berg Robe and husband Mike Robe at the Los Angeles County Bar Family Law Section Annual Awards.

A graduate of UCLA Law School, where she was a member of the Law Review, Lynette Berg Robe has many years of experience in Family Law. She has been named a Los Angeles Super Lawyer annually since 2006 and was recognized as one of the “Top 50 Women Lawyers in Los Angeles” from 2010 through 2016.

Lynette Berg Robe has worked tirelessly throughout her legal career to improve the practice of Family Law throughout the State of California. In addition to her membership in Family Divorce Solutions, she is immediate past president of the Association of Certified Family Law Specialists, was a member of the: Board of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, California Chapter, for six years and is a past president of Los Angeles County Bar Association Family Law Executive Committee. She received the Matthew Rae award from LACBA for being outstanding section chair. She also served on the Los Angeles Collaborative Family Law Association (LACFLA) Board. She has received an AV Preeminent rating from Martindale-Hubbell, the highest possible rating in both legal ability and ethical standards through Peer Review. In 2011, she received the Zephyr Ramsey Award from the Harriet Buhai Center for Family Law for her commitment to access to justice for all.

She also previously served on the Family Law Executive Committee of the State Bar for three years and was editor of the Family Law News in 2007-2008.

Lynette Berg Robe has written numerous articles discussing Family Law matters and has been a speaker at many Family Law continuing education programs. She has one published appeal, In re Marriage of Zimmerman (2010) 183 Cal.App. 4th 900 in which she represented the prevailing party, the Respondent.

Robe is trained in Collaborative Law and offers this as an alternative to divorce litigation to her clients. Robe is an experienced Mediator and has mediated scores of cases successfully over the past two decades. Both Mediation and Collaborative Family Law have the potential benefit of minimizing costs for clients when compared to a litigated divorce, and can help preserve family relationships and minimize the stress of divorce, especially on children. Her extensive professional experience enables her to guide clients through this process in a compassionate and dignified manner.

In addition to mediating litigated matters, she has mediated premarital, cohabitation, and postmarital agreements and estate plans as well, and has recently represented a party in the preparation of a premarital agreement through the Collaborative process. Lynette Berg Robe also serves as a consulting attorney to clients going through Mediation.

Robe received her award in ceremonies held during the Los Angeles County Bar Association Family Law Section Gala Dinner Dance and Installation of Officers on September 24, 2016, at the SLS Hotel, Beverly Hills, California.

 

The Thistles In Our Collaborative Divorce Garden

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The Thistles In Our Collaborative Divorce Garden

by Lynette Berg Robe, Family Law Specialist
Law Offices of Lynette Berg Robe, Encino, California

Lynette Berg Robe Family Law Attorney Family Divorce Solutions of San Fernando Valley Divorce Lawyer
Lynette Berg Robe

Wildflowers are in abundance this time of year in Fryman Canyon, where I love to hike with my dogs on weekends. The little rain we received from the disappointing El Niño, inspired them: swathes of golden bush sunflowers, mounds of orange sticky monkey flowers, red heart-shaped penstemons, blue bush lupins. Then I see, in the middle of them, a bunch of prickly California thistles. I think, “ugh,” I hate thistles. They are thorny, both stalks and leaves full of stickers, and they move in and take over the other flowers, sucking up all the resources! How dare they mar this lovely landscape?

When I’m hiking my mind wanders, and the thistles make me think of Eeyore, the old grey donkey in the Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin books. Eeyore is kind of gloomy and depressive, a pessimist at heart. He is always expecting the worst to happen, waiting for the other shoe to drop, and his favorite food is appropriately masochistic: thistles. I look at them again, thinking what an unsavory meal to be anyone’s favorite food, imagining a bristly mouthful.

Then I notice the tiny little purple flowers starting to open in the midst of all those thorns. While not as bountiful as the other flowers, they are still kind of delicate and pretty if you take the time to look. Even though most animals (excepting Eeyore) won’t eat thistles, its flower nectar does attract bees and certain butterflies.

My mind, wandering again, goes to our Collaborative Practice and a recent discussion at a Family Divorce Solutions meeting.

We, too, can encounter thistles among our Collaborative flowers.

In Collaborative Practice, attorneys assume a somewhat different role than in traditional negotiation or in litigation. In Collaborative Practice, attorneys are supposed to help their clients focus on their interests and to try to find out of the box solutions that will work for the entire family. Not surprisingly, one of the parties, or sometimes both, may be a thistle: thorny, defensive, hard, even painful to appreciate.

In traditional litigation and negotiation practice, attorneys can act as thistles themselves, being irritating, intimidating, obnoxiously attacking the other party and his or her attorney, seeking to undermine their positions. In Collaborative Practice, the attorney’s job is not to undermine opposing counsel, their clients, or their positions. Rather, the attorney tries to empower his or her own client to express the client’s interests and reasoning, as well as fostering an environment where everyone including the other spouse can express themselves. Thistles make the Collaborative Process more stressful, and divorce coaches and other team members in the case can be very helpful in creating a productive environment for the couple to be able to express themselves, reducing the stress, and preventing the case from falling out of the Collaborative Process into litigation.

An individual engaged in the Collaborative Process may remain suspicious of the other spouse’s attorney. Their only experience may be the traditional role of the attorney in litigation, so they expect the other party’s attorney to be threatening, devious, and untrustworthy.

One of my Family Divorce Solutions colleagues made a comment which stayed with me. She described a Collaborative meeting where it became clear the other party did not trust her and behaved like a true thistle. When she saw that nothing she could say would change the other party’s erroneous perception of her role in as a Collaborative Process attorney, she decided to simply sit and be silent the rest of the session. She allowed her own client to respond to the spouse. My colleague focused on supporting her client and the overall Collaborative Process in the best way possible, which did not include assuming an adversarial role with the thorny opposing party. As a Collaborative attorney, her priority was to help her client articulate and express his interests and to promote an environment where the couple would be able to reach an agreement.

Clients who are human thistles are a challenge. We have a natural bias against them because of their prickly attitudes, and they make our Collaborative Process more difficult. Collaborative professionals need to look for the flowers. Before their separation, the thistle was once loved and admired by the other spouse. We need to remember that even an obnoxious weed can have its charms!

 

 

The Quality of Mercy: Collaborative Practice, Forgiveness, and Healing

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The Quality of Mercy: Collaborative Practice, Forgiveness, and Healing

by Lynette Berg Robe, Family Law Specialist
Law Offices of Lynette Berg Robe, Encino, California

Lynette Berg Robe

Back when email was brand new, I chose the email moniker, Portia1000@aol.com. I chose this because Portia, a female character in Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” dresses up like a man and acts as an attorney for Antonio, the erstwhile “merchant,” who has lost a law suit against Shylock, a moneylender, and the contract called for a “pound of flesh” if breached. When there began to be actual female attorneys, they were often termed as “Portias.” But I also chose the moniker for perhaps the loveliest speech in all of Shakespeare, when Portia pleads to the court for mercy, to not require Antonio to give up his pound of flesh:

The quality of mercy is not strain’d,

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:

‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes

The throned monarch better than his crown

Webster’s defines “mercy” as being “compassionate or exercising kindly forbearance toward an offender, an enemy, or other person in one’s power.” It is a form of forgiveness, but it is forgiveness given in a situation where the one giving it has the power to hurt or punish the erring party.

As Collaborative professionals and mediators, we often see in our family law cases parties who are lusting for their “pound of flesh.” They feel wronged, think of themselves as victims of the other party, and they have the power to hurt the other party in numerous ways, even though California is a no-fault state. Often, both parties have the ability to inflict wounds on each other. It is our job to help them let this anger go and to forbear inflicting those wounds, and, in doing so, to grant mercy to each other.

I recently read a book by a dedicated death penalty defense attorney named Bryan Stevenson. The title is “Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption.” Stevenson has seen mercy in action. He has sought it from courts, from the victims of crime, from the families, friends and society of the victim. Toward the end of the book, he describes a scene, and gives an insightful description of mercy.

“I understood that even as we are caught in a web of hurt and brokenness, we’re also in a web of healing and mercy. I thought of the little boy who hugged me outside of church, creating reconciliation and love. I didn’t deserve reconciliation or love in that moment, but that’s how mercy works. The power of just mercy is that it belongs to the undeserving. It’s when mercy is least expected that it’s most potent.”

We too are caught up in the web of hurt and brokenness of that family, and, somehow, we need to find a way to help the party who would be the avenger to find mercy within so that healing can begin. As Portia’s speech says, “It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.”

So in this season of gift giving, we need to show our clients that bestowing mercy on the undeserving party is the greatest gift they can give to their families and to themselves, so the New Year can bring healing.