Overview and History

Collaborative Law (also called Collaborative Practice, Collaborative Divorce, and Collaborative Family Law) was originally a family law procedure in which the two parties agreed that they would not go to court, or threaten to do so.
This approach to conflict resolution was created in 1990 by a Minnesota family lawyer named Stu Webb, who saw that traditional litigation was not always helpful to parties and their families, and often was damaging. Since 1990, the collaborative law movement has spread rapidly to most of the United States, Europe, Canada and Australia. Per the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals more than 10,000 lawyers have been trained in collaborative law in the United States, with collaborative practitioners in at least 46 states. In some localities, collaborative law has become the predominant method for resolving divorce, co-habitation and other family disputes. More than 1,250 lawyers have completed their training in England where collaborative law was launched in 2005.
In a collaborative case, the parties strive to reach a fair settlement through a series of meetings, sometimes called joint sessions, between the two parties and their lawyers, and sometimes other neutral experts. The primary focus of the four-way meetings or joint sessions is to identify the priorities, goals, needs and interests of the parties, and help them progress towards and create a settlement that is consistent with their priorities, goals, needs, and interests. The parties make their own decisions based on their own standards. Some have critiqued this aspect of collaborative law (and mediation), believing that court processes are better suited towards protecting rights than voluntary dispute resolution processes. However, most lawyers involved in the divorce process agree that the parties can often make better decisions about their children and their families than a judge.
There is a parallel between Collaborative Family Law and mediation, in that both are facilitative processes. However, In Collaborative Law the parties agree from the beginning of the dispute not to go to court. Mediation is often ordered during the course of the litigation process. Further, in Collaborative Law, the parties are fully informed about the law and the consequences of various options, and their advocates facilitate the negotiations. In mediation, the mediator is a neutral third party who doesn't represent or advise either side