Linda Alvarez - Discovering Agreement: Contracts That Turn Conflict Into Creativity

If we seek peace and community in the world, strangely enough, lawyers will lead us there, specifically through the restorative framework and movement. Discovering Agreement is a brilliant book. One basic insight is that if we can look at, versus look through, the framework in which we create contracts and disputes, it changes everything. The shift from prediction and control to sense and respond is decisive. The author writes easily about a worldview whose ideas are grounded and accessible. The book changes the way we connect with each other and comes at this from the backdoor, where your lawyer is your best friend and the best friend of those you thought were on the other side. Six stars in a five-star world.

Peter Block, consultant, author, and citizen of Cincinnati

In this delightfully readable and important book, Linda Alvarez shows us how to transcend the narrow confines of conventional thinking about contracts and contract law to carve out a new approach based on value creation, sustainability, and resilience. This can help us attain the much desired but seldom attained simplicity on the other side of complexity that the famed jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. spoke of. I expect that the ideas put forth in Discovering Agreement are essential to building and leading conscious businesses.

Raj Sisodia, Professor of Global Business, Babson College;

Co-Founder and Co-Chairman of the Board, Conscious Capitalism; Co-Author, Conscious Capitalism Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business

Linda Alvarezs readable and thoughtful book is a marvel. It focuses on contracts and disputesstaple articles of law practiceand gives many valuable insights and a fresh perspective on how lawyers and clients should approach them. She articulates how conscious practices by lawyers and clients can improve contract formationwhich she explains as the building and structuring of relationships within legal frameworksas well as the anticipation and handling of conflicts that arise from them. She challenges complacency in a world of brittle negotiations and disputes, providing not only lofty principles but detailed practical advice for immediate and effective reform. It is a must-read both for lawyers who need to step back from their daily grind to find more satisfying outcomes for their clients (and themselves) and for law students who can compare this fresh approach with the traditional concepts about negotiation, contracts, and disputes that they are learning in law school. And it may also bring more happiness and professional fulfillment to practitioners who adopt its approach.

Andrew P. Bridges, Fenwick & West LLP, Partner Litigation, Co-chair Copyright Litigation

Law students rave about Discovering Agreement. It gives them permission to think big, to expand their vision of what it means to be a lawyer, to reignite the creativity and optimism that led them to pursue a legal education. We lawyers sometimes forget, writes Linda Alvarez, how much leeway the parties have to design their own legal systems. Her book is a reminder and a path-breaking guide for how parties can use contracts not as weapons of war, but as catalysts for peace. Discovering Agreement is also a tool for empowerment and self-determination. It invites us to relinquish the image of transactional lawyers as cogs in a machine, driven by fear and risk aversion, replacing it with a vision of lawyers as constructive collaborators. Alvarez embodies mindfulness in action at its best: she models humility, integrity, and deep wisdom as practices that can be integrated into the core commitments of a professional life. A must-read for any lawyer, law professor, or law student who wishes to join the movement that is turning the legal profession into a compassionate, enlightened calling.

Shari Motro, Professor of Law, University of Richmond

Linda Alvarezs conflict resolution method in her groundbreaking book Discovering Agreement has been an endless source of guidance for my startup team here at Wevorce. I expect Lindas book will soon become required reading for every entrepreneur. Gone will be the habitual, lethal spiral of confrontation that often goes hand-in-hand with disputes in the fast-paced, pressure-cooker world of startup entrepreneurship. Instead, a road-tested, reliable, legally enforceable alternative that generates a positive and productive path will take its place. This conscientious new path will inspire greater creativity and productivity, resilience in the face of conflict and change, and an end to the pitfalls and molasses-slow pace of conventional legal practices.

Michelle Crosby, founder & CEO, Wevorce

Discovering Agreement

Contracts That Turn Conflict Into Creativity

by

Linda Alvarez

CANDESCENCE MEDIA

Cover design by Carolyn Sexton

The materials contained herein represent the opinions of the authors and/or the editors, and should not be construed to be the views or opinions of the law firms or companies with whom such persons are in partnership, associated, or employed by.

Nothing contained in this book is to be considered as the rendering of legal advice for specific cases, and readers are responsible for obtaining such advice from their own legal counsel. This book is intended for educational and informational purposes only.

2016 Linda Alvarez. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission contact .

ISBN: 978-0-9993292-0-7

e-ISBN: 978-0-9993292-1-4

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