Top best Family Lawyers Near me in ZIP 80002

Louisa Schlieben provides her clients with committed, empathetic, straight-forward representation, focused on helping them navigate challenging circumstances so that they can move their lives forward in a healthy way.. Since transitioning to family law in 2015, Louisa has gained experience in issues concerning divorce, parenting time and decision making (custody), child support, emergency motions, child abuse and domestic violence. She has handled complex jurisdictional matters, high asset divorces, support cases involving unconventional income sources, international and interstate abductions involving the FBI and the State Department, and emotionally wrought matters involving non-parent intervenors. Through it all, she has witnessed the best and very worst that these situations bring out in people.. Always ready to fight for the underdog, Louisa’s approach to her work is informed by her training as a public defender. She started representing clients while still in law school, working with the Alaska Public Defender Agency and the Legal Aid Society in New York City under a student license, then moved to Denver after law school to become a deputy public defender. These experiences provided her with exceptional mentorship, as well as the opportunity to represent hundreds of clients facing traffic, misdemeanor and felony charges, and to try over a dozen cases to juries before the one-year anniversary of her bar admission.. As a native Ney Yorker, Louisa was surprised to learn she was as at home in Alaska’s interior and Denver Colorado as she was in her hometown. But her path to a legal career was different than most attorneys. One of five children, Louisa grew up in a redlined neighborhood of what was then considered Harlem. She was a dedicated student of classical ballet from the time she could walk until she was seventeen years old, performing as a child with the New York City Ballet and the American Ballet Theater. She is fluent in German from spending elementary school at a German language school in White Plains New York, she spent middle school at an elite private all-girls Catholic school on an employee scholarship, then attended two different performing arts high schools before graduating from the Waldorf school her Grandfather once ran. She worked full time to pay her way through Hunter College (CUNY), spent a year working for one of the first women to graduate law school, then attended the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law on a full academic scholarship.. Louisa has lived the experiences of many modern families. She knows it takes courage to entrust a stranger (especially a lawyer) with the most important aspects of ones life: their long-term financial security, the wellbeing of their children, and sometimes even their physical safety. She believes in collaborating with her clients throughout their case to find the best path forward for their unique circumstances and always strives to put children first. You can trust that Louisa will not judge you for your confidences or your tears. Louisa will always be honest with you and will fight hard for your interests.

I have moved to Colorado!  I am currently licensed to practice law in Colorado and in Texas.. I have practiced family law (including divorce, child support, child custody, modifications, enforcements)  in Texas from 1990 to 2022 and since 2022 in Colorado.   I believe that treating others with respect and dignity inspires those others to treat you the same way and this motto has always served me well, both personally and professionally.  I do not believe that a lawyer should create chaos or cause harm in any family.  Families can indeed be "restructured" successfully - without the often permanent emotional and financial damage that some traditional family lawyers endorse.. I am very proud of my reputation for integrity with my peers (lawyers and Judges) and that reputation along with my many years of experience offers my clients unique opportunities to work through their family issues.  I am able to work together respectfully with other lawyers to encourage creative and family-specific solutions for my clients.  Traditional litigation can be like war in terms of harm to folks, both financially and emotionally, and it leaves permanent scars on children.  There is a better way!. I have been practicing family law using the "Collaborative" method since 2004.  Collaborative family matters save your sanity and your family relationships.  Collaboration enables spouses or parents to process a family matter entirely outside the court system - leaving total control of the outcome of parenting and financial decisions to the spouses or parents themselves.  You literally never have to step foot in a courtroom, or air your "dirty laundry" in public, or suffer the indignity of having a complete stranger (even the most well-meaning and outstanding Judge is a stranger to you) dictate to you how to manage your life, your family relationships, your children, or your finances.   Check out Colorado Collaborative Divorce Professionals or Foothills Collaborative Divorce Professionals for more information.. In a Collaborative case your lawyers and other allied neutral professionals (examples of allied neutral professionals: a parenting professional, a mental health professional, a family communications facilitator, a divorce financial professional) work together to offer creative solutions and develop unique family-specific options for the spouses or parents to consider.  It is like a full team effort working towards the goals set by the parents or spouses themselves at the outset of a case, and completely opposite the traditional mud-flinging, lawyer head-bashing, and anger-supporting, chaos of the courtroom environment.  In a collaborative case your lawyers help you choose the allied professionals to work with during the case depending upon your own family issues and needs.  These allied professionals do not represent either party but offer neutral transparent guidance and help create options for solutions to your own family issues.. Enthusiasm for the benefits offered to families by the Collaborative process among lawyers (those who prefer to be problem solvers and not those who encourage hostility and aggression), social workers, counsellors, and enlightened Judges, has really taken off across the country and in Texas we now have a well developed collaborative family law protocol and many successful collaborative practice groups. Collaborative practice groups comprise lawyers, mental health professionals, financial professionals and parenting professionals who work together in a local area and who collectively adhere to a certain set of ethical and educational policies. I update my collaborative training education every single year, participate in local and state wide collaborative groups, and am an active collaborative divorce practitioner. I strive to offer the collaborative process as an option to my divorce clients who seek a less damaging way to restructure their lives. I am also a certified mediator and able to help negotiate settlement agreements for folks who prefer to keep their misery out of the public view and who wish to make decisions for themselves and to move forward with their lives much sooner than they can with traditional litigation. There really is a better way to divorce!. I will be happy to discuss these options with you and to answer your questions!

A Colorado native, Krista earned a bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University’s Medill School, the nation’s premier journalism school, writing and reporting for NBC-TV, The Denver Post, and New York Newsday before becoming a Pulitzer-nominated reporter for Knight-Ridder Newspapers. She then worked extensively in marketing and public relations in California’s Silicon Valley, launching a variety of high-tech companies and products before returning to Colorado to run her own PR consultancy with clients such as Apple and Sony.. Later, Krista had the opportunity to fulfill a lifelong interest in law, going to school at night to earn a law degree while simultaneously working. At the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, she graduated near the top of her class and received numerous awards for scholastic excellence and legal writing and research. While in law school, Krista worked at Jefferson County District Attorney’s Office, Colorado Court of Appeals, U.S. Attorney’s Office, U.S. District Court, and served as a law clerk to former U.S. Attorney Michael J. Norton.. After law school, she was hired as a law clerk to a federal judge at the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, one of the most prestigious and highly sought roles for new lawyers. There, Krista handled the court side of hundreds of federal lawsuits, steering them from their filing through final orders. She also learned the art of mediation by participating in extensive settlement conferences with the judge for whom she clerked.. Despite having many opportunities to take the typical route from her clerkship into complex civil litigation, Krista began her family law work at a leading boutique law firm focused exclusively on family law matters, establishing and then deepening her understanding of best practices.. She later opened her own firm to concentrate her efforts more fully on putting children first, seeking cost-effective solutions, and preserving as much civility as possible for people affected in all areas of family law.. Krista’s family law experience is vast, spanning straightforward and amicable divorce through international cases with complex jurisdictional and criminal elements. Through careful case-strategy planning and execution and a relentless attention to detail, Krista also has an excellent track record of settling cases, taking only the most extreme cases all the way to trial. Please see these testimonials from former clients.. Krista’s current practice engages her directly in every facet of the firm’s cases involving issues of marriage and parental rights. Because of her commitment, however, to children, she spends the vast majority of her time serving as a child advocate to represent directly or provide input to courts, parents, and counsel on children’s best interests. She also speaks nationally and locally on child-advocacy issues, teaching other attorneys and judicial officers ways to best meet children’s needs. She has been a leading voice for the use of child legal representatives in domestic cases, bringing the role to courts throughout Colorado and encouraging the practice nationally. She serves too as a child and family investigator, mediator (having completed mediation and negotiation training through Harvard Business School and the National Association of Certified Mediators), a parenting coordinator and decision maker, and as a guardian ad litem. She is trained and authorized to practice in these roles by the Office of the Child’s Representative as well as the State Court’s Administrative Office as well as being licensed to practice law in Colorado and Wyoming.

Experienced Family attorney serving clients in Arvada and surrounding areas.

Experienced Family attorney serving clients in Arvada and surrounding areas.

Experienced Family attorney serving clients in Arvada and surrounding areas.