After graduating magna cum laude from Duke and earning a master’s degree in political science from UNC Chapel Hill (she’s still an avid Blue Devils and Tar Heels fan), White earned her J.D. from Stanford Law School and spent the beginning of her career practicing litigation and international trade law. Later, after her divorce and transition to single parenthood, she pivoted to a practice area that was important to her personally: family law. “My outlook is that I need to pay close attention to what the client needs and how to get them to what I call their best self, then I help them maximize that,” says White. She likes to brief clients on possible avenues and processes, but she favors collaboration, since, in her view, it best addresses the many nuanced financial, child development, and mental health challenges separation can present.
Since her career shift, White has excelled in her field; she is Chair of the D.C. Metro Protocols Committee—for which she helped develop and author a 100-page manual on collaborative law as a thorough resource for collaborative lawyers—and she’s co-chair of the Ethics Committee of the Maryland Collaborative Practice Council. She’s also a founding member of the Collaborative Practice Training Institute and was honored with the inaugural Member of the Year Award by the Collaborative Dispute Resolution Professionals (Maryland) for her work on the development of the D.C. Metro Area Protocols for Collaborative Divorce.
In her free time, White indulges her free-spirited side, taking hip-hop dance classes (she was once a performing ballet dancer) and immersive Spanish-language courses, as well as spending time at the beaches of her home state, North Carolina.
Anne White, a partner at Pasternak & Fidis, P.C., has enjoyed many accolades throughout her diverse legal career: from regular selection as one of the D.C. area’s top divorce lawyers by Washingtonian and Bethesda Magazine to listing with Best Lawyers® since 2009. Now, she’s been selected as the 2020 “Lawyer of the Year” for Collaborative Law: Family Law for the D.C. region by Best Lawyers®.
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