Linda Alvarez

The first twenty years of Linda Alvarez's professional life were spent pursuing a successful career in the arts. Trained in theater, she and her husband produced and managed theatrical and media productions across the United States. In the mid-1990s, Alvarez reentered the academic world earning her law degree, magna cum laude, in 1997. She entered private practice in the large-firm environment--including Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati (Palo Alto) and Vinson & Elkins (Houston). Later, as...See more

The first twenty years of Linda Alvarez's professional life were spent pursuing a successful career in the arts. Trained in theater, she and her husband produced and managed theatrical and media productions across the United States. In the mid-1990s, Alvarez reentered the academic world earning her law degree, magna cum laude, in 1997. She entered private practice in the large-firm environment--including Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati (Palo Alto) and Vinson & Elkins (Houston). Later, as senior counsel for litigation and trademarks at Align Technology, Inc., she managed litigations on behalf of the corporation as well as shepherding the company's valuable consumer trademark portfolio. Alvarez launched her solo practice in 2005 and, in 2012, was recognized by the American Bar Association as a "legal rebel" for her innovative approach to contract formation. Alvarez developed Discovering Agreement as a way to reframe the negotiation process, the drafting of contract language, and the performance of contractual relationships. Where conventional perspectives cast the parties as adversaries and bargaining power as a function of dominance, Discovering Agreement orients the parties as collaborators code- signing their ideal business relationship. With Discovering Agreement, parties take the reins and, facilitated by legal counsel, build their own ideal systems within the context of the larger legal-justice system, actively transforming how the conventional system impacts their present and future interactions and dealings. Alvarez's approach grew out of years of study of the principles of active and effective nonviolence and draws on proven mediation and restorative justice models of dispute resolution. It is also informed by current research in neuroscience, and by developing trends in business, such as "Conscious Capitalism" (reorienting business governance and development towards socially, environmentally, and personally responsible values). See less