In early June, I heard a report from the Harris County District Clerk, Loren Jackson, that 77,000 new family law cases were filed in Harris County in 2009, to be handled by 9 Family District Courts and a 10th court dedicated to family violence cases. This compared with only 46,000 cases filed in the 39 civil district courts. To say that the family district courts are overwhelmed with the volume is to understate the problem. The result of this huge volume of cases and the limited number of courts available to hear them is that couples who need to have their cases heard often wait months and sometimes years to reach a resolution to their family matter.

What many couples may not be aware of is that they do not have to rely on the litigation route to get their divorce or other family matter resolved. If they are willing to put their anger and fear aside, there are other routes to resolution available to them. One of them is early intervention mediation. Mediators are neutrals, trained to assist people in reaching agreements. If resolution is reached with a mediator, a family attorney can be hired to do all of the paperwork necessary to finalize their case legally.

In the event that the parties are unable to settle in mediation, they can then hired trained collaborative lawyers to assist them in reaching a resolution. Collaborative law is conducted out-of-court, in the privacy of the lawyer’s offices. Collaborative lawyers have special training in teaching couples to reach agreements on their own, without having to resort to the courts. If needed, communication facilitators and financial professionals can be part of a collaborative team to guide the couple through the process. National statistics on collaborative law show that between 90-95% of all collaborative law cases end in settlement.

Given the backlogs at the courthouse, litigation should be seen as a last resort in most cases. When looking for a lawyer, you should ask if the lawyer you are seeing has been trained in collaborative law. They can then tell you if that approach is appropriate in your case. There will always be cases that need the assistance of a judge or jury to get resolved. Those should be the ones at the courthouse. Not the ones that could be resolved by the parties with the help and guidance of trained mediators or collaborative lawyers.

In the current shaky economy, many people in need of an attorney go shopping for the least expensive attorney they can find. This may be a false economy, given the potential for finding an attorney with little experience and minimal dedication to the client’s welfare. This can be especially true in the area of family law.

Poorly drafted divorce decrees and transfer documents can leave clients with child support orders that are unenforceable, clouds on the title of their real estate, unrealizable interests in retirement plans, and complicated and expensive post-divorce litigation that could have been avoided if a competent attorney had been hired in the first place.

Not that every inexpensive attorney is incompetent. There are many boutique family law firms that have younger attorneys who bill at a lower rate but have the advantage of supervision by the more experienced senior attorneys. There are also less expensive approaches to divorce that are offered by more expensive counsel.

When shopping for representation, the client should look for an attorney who explains all possible processes for resolution of their divorce.

• Does the attorney ask if the couple are capable of sitting down together and coming to a “kitchen table” resolution with the attorney available to answer any questions that might come up?
• Are they informed that there are mediators who they can work with to resolve their differences with the attorney being utilized to do the required paperwork?
• Has the attorney been trained in collaborative law, a non-adversarial approach to divorce resolution which offers the added advantage of teaching the couple a system for resolving their differences after divorce?

If the only approach mentioned by the attorney is litigation, the client should question why that is the only process being suggested, as in many cases, a litigated solution can be the most expensive possible approach, even when the attorney hired was the “least expensive” to be found.