Why I wrote Unbundling Your Divorce I first heard the word “unbundling” in November 1995, and my life changed forever. I had been vaguely (and occasionally stridently) unhappy with the way our family law system works for a number of years. Attending a meeting of the task force called “Family Court 2000,” It was there that I was first introduced to the concept that instead of taking over a whole case, lawyers could partner with their clients, coaching and assisting them to do part of their case themselves. Trained in the traditional approach to law, it had never occurred to me. I can still feel the excitement as I considered the possibilities of this radical new concept. I immediately set out to learn as much about it as I could, only to find that no one knew very much at all. Woody Mosten, who coined the term, had written a few articles. Otherwise, there was nothing out there. My disquiet at the lack of material quickly faded as I realized I had stumbled onto something entirely new, and that I could have a part in forming what it was to become. I set out to study the concept from every angle, to figure out how it should work to provide the greatest benefit to litigants and the lawyers who would assist them, how to ensure quality standards, where the pitfalls were, and how to make the practice safe and effective. The need was all around me, since well over half of the litigants in most family courts in California at that time appeared without lawyers. Since no one had written much about it, and I’d just published my first book [link to DFH], I naturally assumed that I should write one, teaching lawyers how to offer limited legal assistance to litigants who wanted to represent themselves. I started to methodically gather information for a book targeting lawyers. Then, in April 1997, I realized I was going at it from the wrong direction. The book I was to write should be for the people themselves, not for lawyers. It was the people who were flailing in an unfamiliar and frightening legal system who needed to know the options available to them for limited assistance from attorneys, as well as what problems they might anticipate if they decided to take that route. Once I shifted the focus of the book from lawyers to litigants, and decided to write it in plain, understandable English that any lay person could follow, the first draft virtually “wrote itself” in a little over two weeks. It was published in October 1997 under the title A Client’s Guide to Limited Legal Services. At the time, it was totally revolutionary. I then spent the next 9 years teaching, tweaking, advocating, and lobbying to have limited scope representation accepted. In July 2001, it was unanimously adopted by the Board of Governors of the State Bar of California as official policy. I spent several years traveling all over California training lawyers how to help litigants represent themselves in court. By 2005, I realized that events had overtaken the book. It was no longer revolutionary. Many developments of the previous eight years were not reflected in the text. New techniques had been created, and institutional acceptance was spreading from California to other states. As a result, I decided to substantially expand and revise it. The result is Unbundling Your Divorce. Ordering Info
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