Disclosure to prospective clients about the costs and benefits of family arbitration and provision of pre-process steps:
- plain-language information on website or elsewhere about costs, risks and benefits of private arbitration
- accessible formats of Q&A, process agreements and general information
- disclosure of governing Standards of Practice
- disclosure and explanation of pre-process requirements
- awareness of duty to assess whether case is appropriate for arbitration
- accessible, confidential intake forms and procedure
- informed and current intake and screening processes including use of screening tool
- compliance with best practices for screening for power imbalances and IPV
- established relationship with qualified third party screeners who follow best practices
- comprehensible explanation of fee and retainer requirements and billing practices
- advise parties to consider whether free/funded and/or court annexed services could be useful to the parties but which would not otherwise be available through arbitration. This would include the potential ability to appoint the Office of the Children’s Lawyer to conduct an assessment, to perform a Voice of the Child Report or to act as counsel for a child which, if court-ordered, are at no cost to parties. (The OCL generally does not participate in private DR processes other than child protection cases.) Welfare cases)
- consider if matter has a public policy perspective which is better left to the courts to decide.
