Collaborative Law Institute of Texas, Convening in Austin March 3-5, to Help Professionals Help Divorcing Couples Avoid the Courtroom

Austin (PRWEB) February 5, 2010

The Collaborative Law Institute of Texas, a statewide organization promoting collaborative family law as an alternative to the traditional litigation approach to family law disputes, will co-sponsor with the State Bar of Texas, a conference for approximately 200 participants on March 3-5 at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center, 1900 University Avenue in Austin.

The conference will feature 40 presenters, most of whom practice collaborative family law in Texas, discussing the latest developments in the field.

According to Collaborative Law Institute of Texas President Kevin Fuller, collaborative law is gaining popularity across Texas as well as across the nation, and the Collaborative Law Institute seeks to continue to educate and inform the public about this family-friendly, business-friendly alternative to traditional divorce.

“For couples contemplating divorce, collaborative law is an alternative that often proves more beneficial and less damaging for both of the parties, their children and their property,” Fuller noted. “Collaborative law can be especially helpful to parents who wish to ease the children’s transition through a divorce into their new living situations.”

Collaborative Law is a solution-oriented alternative to traditional divorce. Instead of focusing on assessing blame for problems, the parties and the professionals representing them focus on finding solutions to problems that best fit the competing and shared needs and interests of the parties and their children.

Collaborative Law helps families settle a divorce cases without going to court. The Collaborative Law approach offers couples facing divorce the following advantages:

• Helps families divide their wealth/business without destroying it
• Restructures a family after a divorce without the nastiness of adversarial courtroom proceedings
• Develops creative solutions to potentially expand the pie that is being divided verses losing big pieces of the pie to the high costs of contested litigation
• Provides divorcing couples with a more family and business friendly way to divorce

The conference will include a day of workshops and panels on Wednesday, March 3 for professionals who wish to learn the fundamentals of collaborative law, followed by the March 4 and 5 conference involving workshops and panels on a range of issues related to collaborative law practice. This year, the conference will place special emphasis on innovative resolution strategies, collaborative law in non-divorce contexts, helping lawyers spot and understand the impact of mental health issues, the concept of risk and the collaborative process, and dealing with extremes in the collaborative process.

The Collaborative Law Institute of Texas is an organization of family lawyers, mental health professionals and financial professionals serving divorcing clients throughout all Texas counties and in Texas’s major metropolitan areas, including Amarillo, Austin, Dallas, Denton, Fort Worth, Houston, Lubbock and San Antonio.

Fuller and other collaborative law professionals will be available for interview throughout the conference; please contact Phil West at 512.769.3838 to schedule. More information on Collaborative Law Institute of Texas, including the organization’s official blog, is available at http://www.collablawtexas.com.

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