What is Collaborative Law?

Empowers you to resolve your legal disputes without judges or court personnel making decisions for you.

Provides you with specially trained Collaborative lawyers, mental health and financial professionals to educate, support and guide you in reaching balanced, respectful and lasting agreements.

Offers you a safe and dignified environment to reduce the conflict and minimize its impact on you, your children, your family and your life.

Collaborative Practice is a refreshing approach that is catching on with both clients and practitioners alike. It is a "process option," just like mediation or traditional representation, and is a viable alternative to a contested case in court. A big benefit of Collaborative Practice is the focus on understanding everyone’s needs, interests, and values, and helping the parties convert those interests into long-term, durable agreements. The process relies on teamwork to help you problem-solve and maintains open channels of communication between you and your spouse/partner.

A Peaceful Alternative to Resolving Disputes

Collaborative Process is unique and beneficial. It is designed to help parties reach an agreement that is tailored to the specific needs of all persons involved. It alleviates the anxiety and stress of lengthy, uncertain and expensive litigation (the “court battle” process).

Collaborative Practice is very popular in family law because there is no court appearance and no trial. With the help of your own specially-trained lawyer, you and your spouse/partner make all decisions together. The goal of collaboration is to reach a settlement that is acceptable to both parties. You have more control over the outcome of your dispute in a collaborative setting than in a courtroom, where the judge will have the final say.

Collaborative Practice is also becoming useful in business, and civil law matters.

Benefits of Collaborative Practice

Avoid Court

With Collaborative Practice, participants do not go to court. In fact, the participants sign an agreement committing to resolve the case entirely outside of court.

Legal Advice

A key feature of Collaborative Practice is the presence of attorneys who can provide legal advice to their clients during face-to-face negotiations (called “4-way” meetings). In divorce mediation participants typically will not get legal advice unless they hire a consulting attorney.

Negotiating Partner

The collaborative attorney acts as a negotiating partner with his or her Collaborative client. This is different from divorce mediation where attorneys often do not participate directly in the mediation and it is up to the client to negotiate for him or herself.

Client Control

Collaborative Practice allows participants to retain control over their own agreement rather than leaving it up to a judge who is not familiar with their family. Further, Collaborative Practice allows people to make highly individualized agreements that work best for their family which otherwise could not be ordered by a court due to a court’s limited authority.

Client Satisfaction

Collaborative participants report high degrees of satisfaction with the process as well as the outcome, compared to litigation clients. Even if litigants are satisfied with the outcome of a case, they are often dissatisfied with the cost, stress, uncertainty and acrimony associated with litigation.

Maintain Your Privacy

Collaborative Practice is a private process, unlike litigation which plays out in a public courtroom. Further, litigation often generates many public documents that include allegations and other “dirty laundry.”

Your Own Timeline

Collaborative Practice participants create their own timeline. The case can move at the pace that best suits their family. Litigation clients are subject to the timeline and appearance requirements of the court system.

Preservation of Relationships

The preservation of relationships is often important to clients, especially when kids are involved. One of the reasons Collaborative Practice works so well is because it assists the parties in communicating with each other. Participants often report they have not communicated so well in years.

Oregon Association of Collaborative Professionals [OACP]