Cohousing-L Mailing List: Using Legal Advice [WAS: Concerning Consensus and established CoHo communities

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On Mar 14, 2005, at 12:49 PM, Rob Sandelin wrote:

> I would strongly disagree that dealing with lawyers is any way to deal 
> with
> situations described. If your goal is to be a community, then you need 
> to
> focus on how to do that. I can say with some confidence that lawyers 
> and
> rules will not make a community of caring people.

I don't think lawyers create a community of caring people but they can 
be very useful in working with people who have no interest in being a 
caring person in a community. They can also be useful in bringing 
people back to their senses when they are confiscating public land for 
private purposes which it sounds like is going on in this community.

We have a very good law firm in DC that works only with condos. Our 
lawyer has been very good at pointing out when something is potentially 
of great risk to the community and when it is not. She handled a very 
difficult negotiation with our developer without becoming 
confrontational. In other instances she has been very good at 
prioritizing things for us so we could distinguish between the really 
important and the not so important in terms of liability and financial 
risk.

She has been very helpful in assuring those who want to do everything 
with a lawyer that that is not necessary. For example, we don't need 
letters signed by a lawyer to give the board any authority. She has not 
infrequently said "No,  you don't need me to handle that. It will 
resolve itself."

Lawyers can be the kiss of death but they can also be the kiss of life 
-- just like other professionals. In many instances they allay fears 
and that is a good thing.

I changed the subject line because the community we are discussing has 
only been moved in from 6-12 months so it really isn't an established 
community and this response isn't related to consensus.

Sharon
-----
Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org