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Useful Resources for Clients & Practioners The various Participation Agreements used by the Academy’s Collaborative attorneys, mental health professionals and financial specialists are the cornerstones and foundation of the Collaborative Process. Click here to access these agreements...

Useful Resources About Collaborative Law

Imagine... A Collaborative Approach To Divorce
Gary Direnfeld
There is a movement in family law whereby divorcing couples can sign agreements with lawyers to not go to court. More specifically, the process is known as Collaborative Family Law (CFL) and the agreement to not go to court is binding upon the lawyers, not the couple. If one or both clients are unsatisfied, either may still march the dispute to court. They will however have to find new lawyers.

Divorce without Courts by Jane Gross of New York Times

The Spiritual Aspects Of Collaborative Law
Dale L. Raugust
The good news is that within the last few years there has been an explosion of new approaches to the resolution of conflict within the family. The adversary system is now regarded by most far sighted individuals as an outdated and ineffective method for resolving conflicts within the family. Most of the time the adversary system makes the problem worse, as the members of the family are forced to talk trash about the other member to "win" their case and obtain custody of the children or a better financial settlement. One new method of dispute resolution is collaborative law.

How To Market Your Collaborative Law Practice
Elizabeth Ferris
How do certain ideas, services, products or messages advance from a position of unfamiliarity in the market to a position of popularity and recognition? I believe Collaborative Law is nearing a tipping point in which it may start to rapidly transform the way disputes are resolved in the U.S, Canada, and beyond.

The Basics of Collaborative Family Law- A Divorce Paradigm Shift
Sherri Goren Slovin
Collaborative Family Law (CFL) is a revolutionary approach to divorce that has quickly spread throughout the United States and Canada. Often misunderstood and occasionally maligned, it has the potential to dramatically change the field of family law.

Understanding The Basics Of Collaborative Family Law
Sherri Goren Slovin
The process you choose to end your marriage will have a far-reaching impact on the custodial, financial and emotion outcome. Depending on where you live, you may have the options of mediation, Collaborative Family Law (Collaborative Practice), traditional negotiation, or litigation. The following is an overview of the Collaborative Family Law process.

The Collaborative (R)evolution
Chip Rose
In the field of conflict resolution, the contemporaneous emergence of the modern mediation movement began a course change that is nothing short of revolutionary. If we tracked the arc of that change like a Saturn rocket, mediation was the first stage lift off and Collaborative Law is the second stage booster.

The Creative Solution: Sibling Non-Rivalry
Chip Rose
Either the Collaborative Law (CL) movement has already sprouted in your community or it will in the near future. The growth of this latest entry into the dispute resolution field demonstrates meaningful similarities to and differences from the emergence of the modern mediation movement beginning in the early 1970's. In every sense, these two movements are siblings, evolving from a common gene pool.

Making Sense of Collaborative Law
Robert Wildau
To most attorneys including this one, on the first hearing "collaborative law" sounds like a contradiction in terms. Lawyers go to court to find out who's right and who's wrong, so what's to collaborate about? Or if people are truly collaborating, why should they need to resort to law at all?

Collaborative Family Law: A Path Beyond Winning
Gay Cox
This paper is written in furtherance of the goal of increasing the number of practitioners willing to engage in the practice of law collaboratively so that the pool of attorneys available to the ever-increasing number of clients seeking the service is adequate to meet the demand.

Collaborative Concepts
Chip Rose
As the Collaborative Family Law model moves into its second decade of expansion, we can observe how far it has come and how far it has yet to go. The two most frequently expressed frustrations I hear while training around the country and across Canada are, the difficulty in getting cases, on the one hand, and the difficulty in keeping the case collaborative, on the other. As was true for mediation in the decades of the 80's, the desire of the professionals is out pacing the consumer demand.

The Role of Law in Conflict Management
Alan Simpson
The task of this paper is to explore the relationship between law and conflict management. This paper has four components: stated assumptions of law, underlying values that affect the relationship, the impact of the legal process on present day forms of dispute resolution models, and questions for future ponderings. The conclusion of this paper expresses the beliefs of this learner's present and developing understanding of law and its relationship to conflict management.

What is Collaborative Law?
Maury Beaulier
Collaborative law is a new way to resolve disputes by removing the disputed matter from the litigious court room setting and treating the process as a way to "trouble shoot and problem solve" rather than to fight and win.

Family Section Editorial Winter 2001
Donald T. Saposnek
Family Mediation has found a new home. The Academy of Family Mediators, which, for the past 20 years, has been the premier international professional organization for family mediators has, as of January, 2001, merged with the two other national organizations for alternative dispute resolution - SPIDR (Society for Professionals in Dispute Resolution), and CREnet (Conflict Resolution Education Network). The new amalgam organization, called the Association for Conflict Resolution (ACR) is now the largest membership association in the conflict resolution field, and has as its mission, "...to promote peaceful, effective conflict resolution."

Why Collaborative Law?
Maury Beaulier
Collaborative law is a process that was created by lawyers as a bloodless alternative for resolving family law and divorce issues.

Introduction To Collaborative Negotiating
Chip Rose
The core of the collaborative process is to facilitate the making of agreements. To be effective in this role, it is necessary to make a mental shift in the mindset that one brings to viewing both the nature of the conflict and the elements inherent in the personalities, characteristics and resources of the parties.

Sample Stipulation For Collaborative Law
Chip Rose
Petitioner SUSAN SMART and Respondent SAMUEL SMART, and their respective attorneys, enter into the following stipulations with respect to the above-captioned Family Law action now pending before the Court:

Principles and Guidelines For the Practice Of Collaborative Law These standards give guidance to parties participating in the collaborative law process.

Turn Down the Volume When it Comes to Divorce
Barbara Stark
There are options for couples who share the goal of ending their marriage in a constructive way, minimizing hostility and damage to all family members. There are three paths to divorce: the conventional adversarial process, a mediated settlement, or a collaborative approach to the process.