About Us

Kathleen Clark has practiced law and mediation in the San Francisco Bay Area for twenty years.  In addition to her law degree, she has a Masters Degree in business management and a PhD in Social Sciences.  Kathleen's dissertation is entitled "Bringing Dialogue and Collaborative Law to Health Care".  The collaborative process is a  cost-effective, non-adversarial process, increasingly chosen as a better alternative to litigation.

Kathleen currently publishes, speaks, consults, facilitates, trains and coaches about

• the dialogue process,
• collaborative law,
• patient safety,
• disclosure,
• systems thinking, and
• appreciative inquiry.

Kathleen is the founder and CEO of Servant Lawyership and an Associate at the Taos Institute, a community of scholars and practitioners committed to exploring, developing and disseminating ideas and practices that promote creative, appreciative and collaborative processes in communities and organizations around the world (http://www.taosinstitute.net/kathleen-clark-phd; http://www.taosinstitute.net).  

She is also Chair of the West Coast Chapter of the Global Collaborative Law Council (GCLC), serves on the ABA Dispute Resolution Section Collaborative Law Committee, and was one of the original members of the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals (IACP) Civil Collaborative Practice Task Force, which first met in Chicago in 2005.    

Kathleen's expertise derives from, among other things, the extensive inquiry underlying her dissertation, which examined the following: 

• the special suitability of collaborative process, versus litigation, for use after adverse medical events;  
• dialogue among stakeholders (including patients, physicians, attorneys, insurers, hospital risk managers, and other interested parties, as necessary) about effective practices;
• the cultures of law and medicine and their common goals after adverse events; 
• improved patient safety practices as a result of patient, physician and attorney collaboration; and  
• law as a healing profession.

Kathleen draws on many strategic partners, including attorneys, consultants, health care providers, coaches and thinkers, in her work to ensure the best results for her clients.

Kathy Clark-sep 08-Collaborative Law from Dawn Dole on Vimeo.