Healers of Conflict

Our mission is to help you to “heal” conflicts as productively, as cheaply, and as quickly as possible; not to promote them or provoke them. Having studied conflict resolution theory since the 1970s, we work with you to better understand how the legal system can be used, along with other “alternative dispute resolution” strategies, to resolve the conflicts or problems that led you to seek assistance.

We help you plan: to avoid unnecessary conflict, primarily in estate planning and in child custody cases.

We provide legal services: when conflicts do erupt we provide legal consulting and counseling; legal advocacy and litigation.

We provide mediation services: when you need a professional neutral to assist in opening communications and changing the dynamic so that entrenched conflicts can be resolved, even when hope of resolution is almost non-existent.

We provide “collaborative law” services: an approach to resolving legal conflicts that blends the best of traditional litigation with the skills and problem-solving approach of mediation.

We provide therapeutic consulting: optionally, a Licensed Mental Health Counselor is available to consult and help you deal with the high emotions and the difficult people and dynamics that so often attend legal disputes; and to help design parenting plans for children that truly meet their developmental age-appropriate needs.

We provide the above services in a wide variety of areas of legal practice.  Follow the links below for further information.

• Collaborative Practice (Collaborative Law, Collaborative Divorce)
• Mediation
• Family Law
• Elder Law
• Probate & Estate Disputes
• Wills & Estate Planning
• Restraining Orders
• Anti-Harassment Protection Orders
• General Civil Litigation

Our Mission in Quotes

“The entire legal profession – lawyers, judges… tend to forget that we ought to be healers – healers of conflict.”

– Former Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, The State of Justice, A.B.A. J. 62, 69 (1984).

“To fulfill our traditional obligation means that we should provide mechanisms that can produce an acceptable result in the shortest possible time, with the least possible expense and with a minimum stress on the participants. That is what justice is all about.”

– Former Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, The Decline of Professionalism, 61 TENN. L. REV. 1, 5 (1993).

“Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real loser – in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a peacemaker the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man. There will be business enough.”

– Abraham Lincoln, Notes for a Law Lecture (July 1, 1850), 2 Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, (Roy B. Basler ed. (1953)).

“In a matter involving or expected to involve litigation, a lawyer should advise the client of alternative forms of dispute resolution which might reasonably be pursued to attempt to resolve the legal dispute or to reach the legal objective sought.”

– Hawaii Rules of Professional Conduct 2.4 (1997).

61% of plaintiffs and 24% of defendants in civil litigation who went to trial after rejecting settlement lost money as a result.

– NY Times citing study published in 2008