Soft skills training day at the Grosvenor Pulford Hotel 14th October 2025

Susan Alexander, a Senior Associate Solicitor in our Family Team is organising a collaborative law soft skills training day at the Grosvenor Pulford Hotel on Tuesday 14th October.

In collaborative law specially trained solicitors and their clients have a binding agreement not to go to court but to resolve matters around the table by teamwork. This is a very amicable way of resolving issues about children and financial issues.   The expectation is that the couple are committed to maintaining a good family relationship once they are divorced.

Collaborative lawyers must have very well-honed soft skills to help them to work with clients in this way. In Susan’s capacity as the Secretary of the Cheshire Collaborative Lawyer’s Group, she puts on these soft skills course each year. The soft skills we learn hep us to be alert to the nuanced dynamics between divorcing couples and help us to overcome any hurdles and to talk sensibly and openly about and explore options to allow them to reach an amicable settlement that keeps their case out of court.

Places on the course are limited to 30 to encourage active discussion and participation by the delegates.  Believe me no one has a quiet snooze at the back on this course.

We have a panel of very distinguished speakers this year.

Karin Walker – author of ‘How to Divorce a Narcissist’. Karin is one of the UK’s leading dispute resolution specialists and a trainer in hybrid mediation.  She is talking to us about hybrid mediation and when to bring in an early neutral evaluator in a financial case.

Phil O’Connor- Phil is an Independent Financial Adviser from ON Divorce Ltd and he will speak to us about the role of the financial neutral.  In collaborative law, we often invite a financial neutral to the meeting to give financial assistance to the couple and to advise on the most cost-effective settlement and to help explore options that the couple may not have thought of.

Angharad Rudkin- Angharad is a chartered Psychologist and author of ‘Split Survival Kit- How Best to support children going through separation’.

Elaine Richardson – Elaine is an accredited Family Mediator, Professional Practice Consultant (PPC) and Trainer.  She will be speaking to us about screening and her Trauma Based work.

Team building with Catriona Levitt and Ruth Hetherington.

To top off the discussions sessions and for some light relief at the end of the day we have fun team building exercises where we are split into teams and given tasks like ‘find another use for this everyday item and describe its new use’;  ‘giving and following instructions whilst blindfolded’;  ‘Make a bridge out of paper straws capable of holding a weight.’  These are fun activities and very challenging.  They help us to learn how to work as a team and how to communicate effectively.

The Grosvenor Pulford is a lovely hotel, and we are treated to cakes and a delicious lunch in the Palm restaurant.  It is the best training course of the whole year, and we have a great opportunity to network with each other and get to build trusting relationships that help us to work together collaboratively which is very beneficial to our clients.  The traditional aggressive approach used by some solicitors is not part of  collaborative law and clients save so much in anxiety and cost by knowing  that their solicitors are trying really hard to cooperate with each other.