David A. Hoffman is an attorney, mediator, arbitrator, and founding member of Boston Law Collaborative, LLC.

David teaches the Mediation course at Harvard Law School, where he is the John H. Watson Jr. Lecturer on Law, and co-teaches the Mediation course at the Harvard Negotiation Institute of the Program on Negotiation.  He has also been the lead trainer in several mediation trainings for the American Bar Association.

As mediator and arbitrator, he has handled over 1,000 cases involving family, business, employment, and other disputes.  David’s cases range from divorces to complex litigation matters involving Fortune 500 companies.

Professor Hoffman is past chair of the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution, and currently co-chairs the Section’s Collaborative Law Committee.  He is a Distinguished Fellow in the International Academy of Mediators.  He is also past chair of the Boston Bar Association’s ADR Committee and past president of the New England chapter of the Association of Conflict Resolution.

David has published two books — “Bringing Peace into the Room: How the Personal Qualities of the Mediator Impact the Process of Conflict Resolution” (Jossey Bass, with co-editor Daniel Bowling) and “Massachusetts Alternative Dispute Resolution” (Butterworth Legal Publishers, with co-author David Matz).  He has also published more than 75 articles / book chapters on law and dispute resolution.

Hoffman is listed in the book “The Best Lawyers in America” in five categories (Mediation, Arbitration, Collaborative Law – Civil, Collaborative Law – Family, and Family Law Mediation).  In November 2004, David was chosen as one of the “Top 100 Lawyers” in Massachusetts in Boston Magazine’s SuperLawyers Directory and has been named a Massachusetts SuperLawyer each year since the listing began.

His firm, Boston Law Collaborative, is the winner of two national awards – the American Bar Association’s Lawyer as Problem Solver Award, and the International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution Law Firm Award for Excellence in ADR.

In 2011, David received the John Adams Fiske Award for Excellence in Mediation from the Massachusetts Council on Family Mediation, and in 2005, the Peacemaker Award from the Community Dispute Settlement Center.

Prior to founding Boston Law Collaborative, David was a litigation partner at the Boston firm Hill & Barlow, where he practiced for 17 years.  David also served for a year as staff counsel for the ACLU of Massachusetts.

He is a graduate of Princeton University (A.B. 1970, summa cum laude), Cornell University (M.A. 1974, American Studies), and Harvard Law School (J.D. 1984, magna cum laude), where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.
David lives in a cohousing community in Acton, Massachusetts with his wife, Beth Andrews, LICSW.  They have three children.