One Lawyer Divorce Herstory

Two children enjoy a playful moment on the sunny grass in Olympia, Washington, 2004.

By 2004, I had been practicing family law in Olympia, Washington for fourteen years. I had trained as a collaborative lawyer, a mediator, a guardian ad litem,

and a temporary substitute judge. I had seen what worked and what didn't, and I was convinced that my clients should have better options than litigation and less expensive than all of the other alternative dispute resolution methods I'd worked so hard to learn and use.

Then a frustrating experience where my client got short-changed got me frustrated enough to invent a different way.

My client was a wonderful human being who was getting along with her husband fairly well but they certainly were going to divorce. Sadly, she had also just learned that her first grandchild had a severe disability, and she was carrying that news in her bones every time we met. She didn't need a fight. She needed a resolution she could trust, reached in a way that didn't add to the weight she was already carrying.

We embarked on the collaborative law process together. In collaborative law, both parties sign a contract agreeing that if the process fails, neither person can continue using their collaborative lawyer. The idea is that this creates a shared incentive to stay at the table. It's an elegant concept, except collaborative law requires two lawyers, which results in more moving parts that cost more money with more opportunities for complexity and confusion.

Her husband stopped responding. To her. To his lawyer. To everyone. The process collapsed, and under the terms of the contract, my role was over. My client had to find a new attorney and start the whole thing over again — at a time when she had very little left to give.

I never signed another collaborative law contract.

What I took from that experience wasn't bitterness toward collaborative law itself. The training had given me real tools: interest-based negotiation, careful attention to power imbalances, a commitment to keeping people out of court whenever possible. Those were worth keeping. For some people, the model of collaborative law where two lawyers, meetings with separate lawyers plus with four or more people (sometimes including divorce coaches for each party, child coaches, financial experts, valuation experts, etc) may be better than One Lawyer. Not everyone needs the extra lawyers or extra experts to get divorced.

One Lawyer is built on a different foundation. Like collaborative law, it works best for people who are genuinely trying to reach an honest agreement. Like collaborative law, neither party can later use the One Lawyer attorney against the other. But there is no expensive team of professionals to hire, no parallel process running on two separate tracks, and if one (or both) of the clients decides to leave the process, only the cost of One Lawyer has been spent. There is one experienced lawyer who knows everything both of you know, all at the same time, with no hourly billing spent on secrets and separate conversations.

I created the "Judge Rule" for One Lawyer, and it is the backbone of how this works. Just like a judge making decisions in court does not have secret talks with one side where the other side is in the dark, One Lawyer does not discuss the issues in your case with either side separately. All information to or from One Lawyer is simultaneously shared with both clients.

In the summer of 2004, I put all of it together. Fourteen years of cases. The collaborative training. The mediation work. Years of watching what happened to families when the process sometimes served the lawyers more than it served the people. I boiled it all down into an option that is simpler and better for people who trust each other enough to negotiate openly in communication with an experienced attorney.

I was so excited on the day I created One Lawyer that I spent that afternoon covered in hives (for the first time since big wins in high school speech competitions). I was absent minded when I took my four-year-old son to his friend's birthday party. I remember thinking up more ideas while standing in a hot tent on the lawn full of hovering parents, while the kids played in the bouncy house.

One Lawyer was worth the hives, but I'm glad I haven't had them since.

That was over twenty years ago. One Lawyer has helped well over a hundred of my clients in Washington State. One Lawyer for both parties works. They reached agreements with dignity, open communication, and better long-term outcomes while saving money, avoiding fear, and maintaining their privacy.

If you and the person you're divorcing trust each other enough to share accurate information about the money, I'd like to talk with you.