You’re about to sit across from people who do this for a living, and you don’t. That’s an information gap, and the honest ones will close it for you. This page is about spotting the ones who won’t.

First, the thing nobody will tell you to your face

Some lawyers will talk you out of collaborative divorce. Not because it’s wrong for you — because it pays better to fight.

I’ll be blunt, because this is the part you can’t easily find out on your own: there are firms that advertise collaborative divorce right on their website, and then spend your whole first meeting explaining why you, specifically, need to gear up for a battle instead. Sometimes that advice is right. Plenty of times it’s just the math of how that firm makes money. A contested divorce bills a lot more hours than a settled one.

You’re not in a position to know which it is. So instead of trying to read their motives, learn to read the tells. That’s the rest of this page.

The list is a starting point, not an assignment

If your spouse handed you a list of names, here’s something you should know: you are not required to hire anyone on it. You pick your own lawyer. Full stop.

And the bigger decision is yours too. Whether you do a collaborative divorce at all is your call — not your lawyer’s. A good lawyer lays out your options and what each one really means, then helps you down the path you choose. They don’t get to decide it for you, and they shouldn’t push you into a courtroom — or out of one — to suit themselves. You’re the client. This is your divorce, and how you handle it belongs to you.

A list like that is usually just attorneys who happen to be trained in a process most lawyers aren’t. It’s a convenience, not an instruction. You’re free to go find your own collaboratively-trained lawyer who’s not on anybody’s list — and a lot of people do exactly that, because hiring the lawyer you chose is part of how you stay in the driver’s seat.

So the real skill isn’t “should I trust this list.” It’s “how do I vet anyone — on the list or off it.” Here’s how.

How to vet any lawyer for this

Collaborative divorce is a real, specific process with real, specific training. A lawyer either has it or doesn’t. You’re allowed to ask. Here’s what to ask for:

“Are you actually trained in collaborative law — and when?” There’s formal training for this. “I’m collaborative” and “I’ve done the collaborative training and I practice it regularly” are not the same sentence. You want the second one. Someone who does it a few times a year is sharper at it than someone who did one training years ago and forgot it.
“Are you a member of IACP or Collaborative Divorce Texas?” These are the real credential bodies — the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals (IACP) and, here, Collaborative Divorce Texas. You can look a lawyer up in their directories yourself. People have done exactly this to vet me. Membership in both is a good sign; membership in neither, for someone claiming to be “collaborative,” is a question worth asking about.
“Roughly how many collaborative cases have you handled?” You’re not looking for a huge number. You’re looking for a real one, said without flinching.
“And how many of those settled successfully — without ending up in court?” This is the one that matters most, and the one a lot of people don’t think to ask. Anyone can start a case as “collaborative.” What you want to know is how often this lawyer actually carries one all the way to a signed agreement instead of letting it slide into a courtroom fight. A lawyer who finishes what they start will answer this happily. Hesitation, or a number much lower than the cases they “handled,” tells you something.
“If we did this and it fell apart, what happens to you?” The honest answer is “I’d be off the case — I can’t take a collaborative matter to court, so you’d hire someone new.” If a lawyer fudges that or makes it sound like no big deal, they may not actually be set up to do collaborative. That rule is the heart of the process.

What “blowing smoke” sounds like

You won’t always get a straight no. More often it’s steering. Listen for these:

  • “Collaborative doesn’t really work for cases like yours” — said fast, with no questions asked about your actual case. Maybe it’s true. But a good lawyer gets there after listening, not before.
  • “You need to protect yourself” used as a reason to escalate rather than to inform you. Protecting you and going to war are not the same thing, and a lawyer who treats them as identical is telling you something about how they work.
  • Talking about winning. Divorce doesn’t really have a winner — you’re dividing one family’s stuff and one family’s time with the kids. A lawyer who talks like there’s a trophy is selling you a fight.
  • Getting irritated when you ask about settling. The good ones welcome it. If asking “could we do this without a courtroom?” makes a lawyer impatient, that’s the answer to a different, more important question.

The biggest red flag: “collaborish”

If you bring up collaborative and a lawyer says some version of “I don’t need to sign a full collaborative agreement — I’ll just act collaboratively,” stop and notice that. It sounds reasonable. It isn’t.

We call that “collaborish.” And there’s no such thing — you can’t be kind of collaborative, any more than you can be kind of pregnant.

This isn’t just my opinion about what “counts.” Texas wrote collaborative divorce into law — the Collaborative Family Law Act, right there in the Family Code — and it’s there for a reason. The statute spells out what makes it collaborative, starting with a signed agreement (lawyers call it the Collaborative Law Participation Agreement, or CLPA) and the rule that the lawyers are out if the case goes to court. “I’ll act collaboratively” skips the exact part the law says is the thing.

And skipping it actually exposes you. The protections of a collaborative case — your disclosures staying confidential, the conversations staying out of any future courtroom — come from that signed CLPA. “Act collaboratively” without it and you can land in the worst of both worlds: you open up, share, make good-faith offers — and none of it is protected the way it would be inside a real collaborative case. You’ve taken the risks of collaborating with none of the legal cover that’s supposed to come with it.

So flip it around: if a lawyer is genuinely willing to act collaboratively, why wouldn’t they sign the agreement that says exactly that? The signature isn’t an extra hoop — it is the protection. Which leaves the real question hiding under the whole phrase: what does “act collaboratively” even mean? Collaborative is defined — by a statute, in a signed agreement. “Acting collaboratively” is defined by no one, so it can quietly mean whatever turns out to be convenient later.

Bottom line: offering to “act collaboratively” without the CLPA makes no real sense for you — so it tells you something about the lawyer saying it. Either they don’t actually understand how collaborative works — which is its own reason to keep looking — or they understand it perfectly well and are steering you away on purpose, because they’d rather not do it. (Usually that’s about keeping the door open to a fight, or being able to keep your case and the billing if it falls apart.) Neither one is about what’s best for you.

And here’s the tell underneath the tell: a lawyer who genuinely believes in collaborative isn’t afraid of that commitment. They know that if it ever did fall apart, they could refer you to a terrific litigator in about five minutes — someone they’d send their own mother to. Confidence in the process looks like a willingness to sign it. Hesitation looks like someone keeping their own options open, not yours.

About the “get a pit bull” advice

Someone in your life — a friend, a sibling, a coworker who’s been through it — has probably already told you to get a shark. Get a pit bull. Get the meanest lawyer you can find.

I understand why that’s appealing. When you’re scared and angry, the idea of someone vicious in your corner feels like safety.

Here’s what twenty-plus years of this has taught me: the pit bull is usually the most expensive, most destructive, least effective path there is — whether the fight is over the kids or over money. A lawyer whose only tool is the fight will find a fight — whether one needed to exist or not — and you’ll pay for every swing twice. Once in legal fees, and once in whatever you still need standing on the other side: a co-parenting relationship that shows up at every graduation and wedding if you share kids, or a business, a retirement, a reputation that has to survive the divorce intact.

The question isn’t “is this lawyer aggressive enough.” It’s: do you want someone who escalates by temperament running the most important negotiation of your life?

That’s a hiring decision. And it’s yours to make.

And here’s the tell that someone’s good

Watch how a lawyer talks about the attorney on the other side.

If they can respect an opponent — if they can say “I’ve worked across from her, she’s tough and she’s fair” — that’s not weakness. That’s the same steadiness that lets a boxer hug the person who just spent twelve rounds hitting him. It means they’re secure enough to fight when it’s needed and stop when it’s not.

A lawyer who treats every case like a blood feud isn’t fighting harder for you. They just can’t do it any other way — and that costs you, because they’ll find a war even where a deal was sitting right there in front of everyone.

You’re not looking for the nicest lawyer. You’re looking for the one who’s calm enough to be useful, and honest enough to tell you when you’re wrong. That person is worth ten of the loud ones.