Adversarial agreements: The attitudes of Israeli family lawyers to litigation in divorce practice

This paper examines the legal, demographic and practice factors that are related to adversarial stances among Israeli family lawyers within a context where mediation has been gaining ground but where cultural and institutional forces promote combativeness and litigation. This study is based on a survey of 99 family lawyers and lawyer-mediators, and 38 in-depth structured interviews. The majority of practitioners claimed to seek settlement goals, and regarded themselves as more conciliatory than adversarial, and more settlement oriented than their colleagues. Although litigation was described as undertaken reluctantly or essentially discounted as an adversarial strategy, success in litigation was widely regarded as a professional ideal, and lawyers who fought zealously and won in court were seen to be admired by clients and colleagues. The standard perception of the profession as a whole is derived from the courtroom behavior of the leading Tel Aviv lawyers, so that litigation continues to be simultaneously denigrated, reinterpreted, justified and pursued.