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Richard
Crouch had a strong
and varied litigation background even before he began practicing
family law full time in the 1980s. After law school, basic training
and infantry commander training, he served for four years as
a lawyer in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General's Corps. Then
from 1968-1981 he worked as a legal writer and editor for the
legal publisher BNA, writing for Criminal Law Reporter
and United States Law Week before becoming the first editor
of Family Law Reporter. Meanwhile he also maintained a
general law practice concentrating in criminal law, civil liberties,
civil rights and public interest litigation, and family law.
His writings and his work in the courtroom brought him increasing
recognition as an expert in family law and such emerging topics
as child custody jurisdiction and international child abduction.
From his work with clients in Northern Virginia, he developed
expertise in the special family law problems of military and
diplomatic families, including the then-new field of retirement
asset division. In the early 1980s he left BNA and began practicing
family law full time. In the late 1980s he served on, then chaired,
a regional lawyer disciplinary panel. Since then, he has occasionally
served as an attorney or an expert witness in lawyer ethics and
malpractice cases.
Richard was involved in the drafting of many of the laws that
are now used every day in family law, such as property division
statutes, the federal law on dividing diplomats' pensions, and
the first ethics code for mediators. He has held office in the
Virginia State Bar Family Law Section and the Virginia Chapter
of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, and is also active
in the International Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. He has co-chaired
the American Bar Association's Child Custody Committee and its
task force on federal legislation. Since 1991, he has served
on the State Bar Family Law Section's Board of Governors and
edited the Section's Newsletter. He has served as a Neutral Case
Evaluator for the Fairfax Circuit Court. Richard Crouch is the
author of Family Law Checklists, published by West Group,
Interstate Custody Litigation, published by BNA, The
Legal Status of Homemakers in Virginia, published by the
Government Printing Office, and the editor of Negotiating
and Drafting Marital Agreements, published by Virginia Continuing
Legal Education.
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John Crouch
is experienced in all four ways of resolving family law issues:
collaboration, mediation, negotiation and litigation. In 1995
he joined and expanded the firm's international and interstate
family law practice, and its emphasis on diplomatic, military,
civil service and international-organization employees. Having
taken every class that William & Mary's law school offered
in wills, estates and related tax issues, he added that work
to his practice, starting with divorced people and diplomatic
families and the specific concerns they face when making their
wills and naming guardians and trustees for their children.
John has always looked for ways to reduce the damage that
divorce does to people and improve the system. While still in
law school, he was trained as a family law mediator and served
as a court-appointed special advocate for children in the Newport
News Juvenile Court. He has co-chaired the American Bar Association's
Child Custody Committee, and was Chair and lead drafter of its
Committee that wrote standards for child representation in custody
cases, which later became the Uniform Representation of Children
in Abuse, Neglect, and Custody Proceedings Act. He has also chaired
the Arlington County Bar Association's Family Law Section.
John was the first Virginian to join the movement for Collaborative
Divorce and one of the very first Virginians to get trained in
collaborative law and began practicing it. He has served as president
and in other positions in the regional collaborative practice
group, which is now known as the Collaborative Professionals
of Northern Virginia. He has also been involved in the healthy
marriage movement, which works to give couples the knowledge,
tools and opportunities to try to save and improve their marriages.
John recently became a Fellow of the International Academy
of Matrimonial Lawyers. Having long been active in the International
Family Law Committees of the American Bar Association, he is
also a member of the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals
and the International Society of Family Law.
Thomas Gordon Crouch practiced
in Arlington for many years, specializing in tax law, wills and
estates, and died in 2004. Ralph Waldo
Crouch died in 1968.
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