David Hoffman

David A. Hoffman is the founding member of Boston Law Collaborative, LLC, where he serves as a mediator, arbitrator, and Collaborative Law attorney. He also teaches three courses at Harvard Law School, where he is the John H. Watson, Jr. Lecturer on Law: Mediation; Diversity and Dispute Resolution; and Legal Profession: Collaborative Law.

David was named Boston’s “Lawyer of the Year” for 2020 in the field of Mediation by the book Best Lawyers in America and U.S. News & World Report, and also Boston’s “Lawyer of the Year” in Arbitration in 2018, in Mediation for 2016, and in “Collaborative Family Law” in 2014. David has been selected for the Massachusetts “Super Lawyer” list published in Boston Magazine every year since 2004, when the listing began. In 2014, the American College of Civil Trial Mediators gave David its Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 2015, the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolution gave David its highest honor, the D’Alermberte-Raven award.

David’s practice is focused on resolving conflict in business, family, and employment cases. He has served as mediator and/or arbitrator in more than two thousand commercial, family, employment, construction, personal injury, insurance, and other business cases.

David has published three books on the subject of dispute resolution: "Mediation: A Practice Guide for Mediators, Lawyers, and Other Professionals" (Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education, 2013); "Bringing Peace into the Room: How the Personal Qualities of the Mediator Impact the Process of Conflict Resolution" (with Daniel Bowling) (Jossey-Bass 2003); and "Massachusetts Alternative Dispute Resolution" (with Prof. David Matz) (Butterworth Legal Publishers 1994, 2d ed. 1996).

David is the past chair of the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution and a founding member of the Massachusetts Collaborative Law Council. David is the former president of Kerem Shalom Congregation in Concord, Massachusetts, and a Distinguished Fellow of the International Academy of Mediators.

Before founding BLC, David was a litigation partner at Hill & Barlow where he practiced for seventeen years. Before that (in reverse chronological order), David clerked for then-Judge Stephen G. Breyer on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, graduated from Harvard Law School (while serving as a research assistant for Professor Larry Tribe and an editor on the Harvard Law Review), worked as a consultant for the U.S. Small Business Administration, established a woodworking business in upstate New York, and pursued American Studies as a graduate student at Cornell. David lives in a co-housing community in Acton, Massachusetts, and has three adult children and an adolescent cat.

• B.A., Princeton, 1970 (summa cum laude)
• M.A., Cornell, 1974 (American Studies)
• J.D., Harvard, 1984 (magna cum laude)