Sheila Gutterman & Suzanne Griffiths: family-law firm thrives in good times and bad.

• Author: Bronikowski, Lynn
• Position: EXECUTIVE EDGE

As the economy began sinking last fall, phone calls to the Littleton law offices of Gutterman Griffiths PC began rising.

"People who had wide assets were saying,". This is a good time to get a divorce because I'd get it cheaper," recalls Sheila Gutterman, president and co-founder of the nine-attorney family-law practice. "They wouldn't have to pay as much maintenance or alimony with assets down."

Or as vice president and co-founder Suzanne Griffiths succinctly puts it: "When money goes out the window, love is close behind."

But with continued market uncertainty, the calls leveled off, and today people are more concerned about the cost of a divorce than the days of "I'd rather give the money to the attorneys than to my spouse."

"We're getting people who may not want to stay together but will for the time being, so they're asking for advice but not acting on it," said Gutterman, 65, who earned an MA in guidance and counseling from the University of Michigan in 1967 and 20 years later would receive her law degree from the University of Denver. "So we're telling our clients to update their financials and be realistic, and we try to be available to them during these tough economic times."

Gutterman and others have dropped their rates and did a little restructuring to be helpful to clients. And more than ever, Colorado's "Mother of Collaborative Law" is bringing her mediation expertise to the client table.

"Suzanne is the litigator, but my choice is negotiating and mediation," said the woman who wrote the book on mediation. "Collaborative Law: A New Model for Dispute Resolution," and in the 1990s founded the Colorado Collaborative Law Professionals.

Gutterman fanned the mediation movement after her first job at a Denver litigation firm, where she soon realized some cases absolutely had to go to court but others could more easily be handled at the negotiating table.

Gutterman lectured nationally on mediation--even taking her message directly to women at a Canyon Ranch Spa when the movement was young.

"They were bringing blankets and pillows to my lecture, and I thought they'd been exercising all day and were really tired," Gutterman says with a laugh. "They thought it was meditation, not...