Doreen Yaffa, Yaffa & Associates. Photo: Mara Gordon

Doreen Yaffa's approach to family and marital law extends far beyond the courtrooms and mediation proceedings in which she's honed her craft. The Boca Raton attorney has been practicing law for 25 years, and although she's more than comfortable litigating on her clients' behalf, she's often racking her brain for alternative means of resolving conflicts. Speaking on the additional burdens many faced following the Great Recession, Yaffa said that period forced her to reconsider the advice she espouses.

“People started to really think about 'Why am I spending all this money on litigating? Why am I spending $1,000 dollars to try to prevent my wife from getting this $20 dollar chair?'” she said. “It made me look at my practice differently, and I felt that I had a responsibility to take each client on as an individual and help them to understand it's more than just the balance sheet. It's the emotional toll that the litigation takes on you.”

Yaffa admits her policy of picking her battles carefully and even her passion for marital and family law may stem from her precarious upbringing. At the age of 5, she moved to Miami from Massachusetts with her sister and mother. Yaffa's father was an ephemeral presence in her life, leaving it on her mother to single-handedly support their family.

“My mom, unfortunately, was struggling,” she said. “She was herself working two jobs … trying to make ends meet for my sister and I. I'm lucky in the sense that she taught us to always be self-sufficient, have an education, pursue your dream … and always have that to fall back on. That was embedded in me at a very young age … and it's something that I carry forward today.

“That was basically our motto growing up: If you want it bad enough, you can have it.”

Yaffa's grit saw her working as well as studying from the time she was 16 years old, up until her first year of law school at Nova Southeastern University. Nowadays, her range of skills is legally tailored and customized to fit the needs of her individual clients, even if she has a preferred method of resolving disputes.

“I still litigate, I still go to court, I'm still board certified, but I really try very hard to see if there is a way of settling it without being perceived as being weak necessarily,” she said. In 2016, Yaffa became trained in family collaborative law, which applies a more team-oriented effort to handling conflicts with the help of mental health professionals and forensic accountants.

“You step outside of litigation and … You meet, you sign a participation agreement, you have agendas, you have time frames, you have discovery, and you ultimately,  hopefully, work through figures with more creativity, more leeway, and you come to a settlement,” she said. “I've had a number of cases, all of which [but] one did not settle collaboratively … High-net-worth cases. And they've saved a lot of money and a lot of time and a lot of aggravation not having to be involved in litigation.”

Yaffa's excitement for creative approaches to family law has also led her in recent years to provide counseling and life coaching sessions to her clients free of charge. She started providing the service after conducting her own research into mental wellness practices and realizing that it could have a tangible effect on both her clients and her peers.

“I started talking to my clients on a different level, and they became interested and they wanted to know more,” she recounted. “So I said let me just throw it out there, I'll just do this group, see if anybody's interested. I asked them … 'Do you want to be my guinea pigs? I'm not certified yet as a life coach, but I'm willing to share and talk and listen.' And it started off with a few people and it's grown to where my conference room which holds — not very comfortably —  about 15 is packed every month.”

Although Yaffa has since earned certification as a life coach, she still has ambitions to bring what she's learned to the larger legal community.

“If I can bring something to the lawyers in the community that can help them on some level, how cool would that be?” she said. “They get the legal training, they get the professional training, but they don't get the 'How do I balance my life?' training. …  I think it's something lawyers want.”

Doreen Yaffa

Born: August 1964, Pittsfield, Massachusetts

Spouse: Jeff Wilson

Children: Amanda, Meghan, Spencer and Samantha

Education: Nova Southeastern University, J.D., 1994; Florida Atlantic University, B.S., 1990

Experience: Board Certified in Marital and Family Law, 2001-present; Founder and managing partner, Yaffa & Associates, 1998-present; Partner, Weissman and Yaffa, late 1990s