Neuroliteracy 101: 21st Century Brain Science for Divorce Professionals

Over the past two decades, neuroscience, positive psychology, and behavioral economics research studies have profoundly changed our understanding of how human beings experience conflict and make decisions. Much of what attorneys learn in law school and on the job about the primacy of reason and about how to prepare clients for rational decision making in negotiations turns out to be founded on ideas that research has proven to be wrong.

This workshop begins with an exploration of 21st-centuryst research discoveries about the human brain and investigates how we experience and resolve conflict through thinking processes driven largely by non-rational emotions. In this workshop, we will look at client behaviors and lawyering habits from the perspective of understanding the human brain. The insights gained will provide a scientifically grounded understanding of the way human brains respond to stress that illuminates the behavior of challenging clients and lawyers. This understanding will provide new insights and skills for assisting clients reach deeper and more durable resolutions, whether reached through negotiations or at trial.

*Pending approval for 6 WSBA CLE Credits, 6 CE Credits for MHPs

Info: How we experience conflict in divorce practice, what clients want and what they get, the vanishing trial, and its implications.

Info: Self-aware practice, entrainment, and other tricks the brain plays, systems aspects of divorce settlement practice, personality classification systems primer.

Host or Publisher Collaborative Professionals of Washington