Divorce Balance

Negotiation > Recovery > Enhancement

Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Motion Hearing R.O.I.

Ah, the "motion hearing."

It's a short-notice, minimalist presentation in divorce court where the judge is asked to render immediate decisions on a narrowly laid set of issues.

You've come to this place because all other responsible avenues of negotiation have failed and you desperately need a decision. Now. I say "desperately" to underscore the fact that what you'll walk away with at the end of this is akin to a starkly contrasted photocopy of an Ansel Adams print — at a Beverly Hills gallery price.

After waiting your turn among the cattle call of motions (or is it "emotions"?) for your case to be pulled, I'd be surprised if your time before the judge ever exceeds fifteen minutes.

That's what you really need to think about when measuring motion hearing R.O.I.

When you choose motion hearing process in favor of all other alternative dispute resolution options, everything boils down to those minutes.

Since I work in corporate negotiation as well as domestic matters, let me offer a parallel that's proven meaningful to motivating front line personnel.

If you were pitching prospects at a trade show, I've argued, every dollar your firm had spent in the months, and sometimes years, leading up to that one presentation at McCormick Place in Chicago should have only been assessed against the return that came from your performance during that event, there in the trade show building.

In November 1996, Sales & Marketing Management ran a feature story on my approach to such R.O.I. accountability. Dividing total expenditures by available show hours, I calculated that every second that an illustrative trade show was open equaled ten dollars spent by the exhibiting company.

Applied to divorce mediation, this analysis has proven effective in reducing motion hearing dockets.

For example, one client recently called to say that she and her husband had just gotten into it about something. She was going to call her lawyer to get things resolved through a motion hearing.

It's not uncommon for my clients to give me a head's up like this. I think it's a mix of professional courtesy and the fact that they come to view me as a partner.

With little prompting, the husband and wife agreed to meet with me to see if we couldn't find a better option.

By way of foundation, let's start with my experience over the years that puts the out-of-pocket cost for a divorce motion hearing at between $1,000 and $1,500 — for each party. Consider the call(s) between client and counsel, preparing documentation, response(s), in-court waiting for your case to be called, actual court time, and drafting order(s) after the divorce court renders its decision.

Again, the actual "value delivery moment" of all that, ie, appearing before the judge, is typically less than fifteen minutes.

That works out to well over a dollar a second.

When my client couple came in to meet with me, I had two wrapped bundles of one dollar bills on the table before us. Each totaled one hundred dollars.

Starting with the husband, I asked him to tell me his side of the story. Before he began, I removed the band from the first stack of currency. I then proceeded to count down one greenback after another, creating an imperfect money pile as he spoke. I asked him to stop speaking just after a minute-and-a-half.

Not surprisingly, the wife spoke much more quickly on her turn. In fact, her cadence came to resemble those legal disclaimers you hear at the end of radio commercials as I was drawing out the last few bills from her stack.

Strategically, my first question following our exercise was this: "Does either of you remember anything from what the other said?"

"I don't even remember what I said," came the gut reply from one of them.

Is that the sort of impact you'd have anticipated from what works out to be a $4,000/hour process?

The maximum "return" is on an investment in skills that negate your need for divorce court motion hearings in the first place.

—posted by Dell Deaton @5:23 PM EST 5/18/2005 [675]

Link to complete articles index