Civil Collaborative Practice takes that same model — the same participation agreement, the same disqualification-on-litigation structure, the same emphasis on client-driven, good-faith negotiation — and applies it outside of family law, on the theory that the same principles that preserve the dignity of families can also preserve the ongoing relationships and reputations at stake in business and civil disputes.

The Global Collaborative Law Council, founded in significant part through the work of attorneys Sherrie Abney and Lawrence R. Maxwell, Jr., lists the practice areas where civil collaborative practice is now used: business and commercial disputes, construction, contracts, corporations, elder law, environmental disputes, franchise, health care, insurance, intellectual property, international disputes, labor and employment, mergers and acquisitions, partnerships, personal injury, probate, professional malpractice, real property, securities/antitrust, sports and entertainment, and torts.

Abney, author of Civil Collaborative Law: The Road Less Travelled, and Maxwell, who helped draft Texas’s collaborative law legislation and the Uniform Collaborative Law Act, trained lawyers and judges around the world in the process. The GCLC now carries on that work, training professionals, maintaining a directory of collaborative attorneys, and educating the public on a process it sums up simply: “changing the way the world navigates conflict.”