Along with our projected move (more on that soon!) and fresh start to the summer, we have taken on a new member of the Skylark team. Patricia Cordischi, a rising senior at Brandeis University, officially started this week as our  Skylark summer intern. Patricia is minoring in legal studies at her university and curious about the world of law. She is highly interested in family law but wishes to explore beyond the domestic realm into entertainment law. At the office, Patricia will have various responsibilities including administrative work, drafting, and sitting in on consultations. She will be answering your phone calls and will hopefully be another friendly face you can speak to. Her background is in marketing, specifically in re-branding of company’s digital platforms, so she will be instrumental in maintaining our blog as well. She is a go-getter and quick learner. With each new endeavor she takes on, Patricia is determined to excel. Patricia looks forward to getting to kn...

Video meetings are starting to replace in-person and phone meetings. Guest Post from Julie Tolek * As more services go digital, it is necessary for legal and mediation professional to follow the trend. Clients expect an equal level of convenience and access in purchasing legal and mediation services that is provided in other online services. This means that the technological requirements on a modern law and mediation firm go well beyond having a good website. It is important for forward thinking mediators and lawyers to add online scheduling, paperless billing, cloud file access and similar options to their regular services for their clients.  Following the growing digital trend, video meetings will likely replace in-person and phone meetings. To help mediators face the changing needs of their practice we’ve thought about the most important considerations involved in adding these services and making them seamless for your clients: Five things to keep in mind when adding v...

It is a common refrain that support payments are usually more than the payor wants to pay and less than the recipient wants to receive.  This discrepancy can be extreme when the parties have been used to a particular lifestyle and the payor's income decreases significantly. It is also understandable that a recipient would be skeptical about reducing support if an income decrease for the payor was voluntary, e.g. quitting his or her job. Those were the circumstances in the recent Appeals Court decision: Emery v. Sturtevant .  The husband/payor in the Emery case resigned from a high income position for "personal reasons" and after an extensive job search obtained a much lower paying job in the same line of work.  He then sought a reduction in his child support and alimony which the trial court dismissed indicating that they were attributing income to him at the job he left. The Appeals Court overturned the trial court's decision and directed the lower court to cal...

Skylark Law & Mediation, PC will soon be moving to Southborough, Massachusetts and it's an opportunity for us and other like-minded professionals.  Our new home will be a building in downtown Southborough, called  the Collaborative Outpost , which has a particular mission: To Provide an Enjoyable Work Space for Collaboratively Minded Professionals ACCOMPLISHING THE MISSION: Justin Kelsey , who will also be a manager of the Collaborative Outpost, first opened his law firm with Matthew Trask as Kelsey & Trask, PC in 2008.  Since that time Kelsey & Trask, PC has evolved into Skylark Law & Mediation, PC , a leader in the resolution of family and probate disputes.  Justin is active in the mediation and collaborative law communities and has long dreamed of opening a shared work space that could expand on the model that has worked so well for Skylark (now a firm with five attorney/mediators). The Collaborative Outpost is the realization o...