About me.

Chaffee is Shannon Allen’s home. A multigeneration Colorado native, Shannon became a raft guide on the Arkansas River in 2005. A year after graduating from the University of Colorado Law in 2011, Shannon and her husband bought their home in Salida, where they live with their three boys.

Mediation is Shannon’s calling. She probes the deeper issues motivating each case and empowers her clients to reach out-of-court solutions that ultimately allow them to go in peace and thrive.

Shannon received her Bachelor of the Arts from Pepperdine University, where she graduated magna cum laude, and her Juris Doctorate from the University of Colorado Law, where she graduated on the dean’s list, and she also completed the institute for global law and policy at Harvard University. Shannon is a devoted academic and a critical thinker with a passion for peacemaking.

After clerking for a Colorado District Court Judge and researching for the Colorado Office of the Alternate Defense Counsel, Shannon narrowed her practice to exclusively family law in 2012, where she combined her aptitude for academic research and writing with her passion for people in order to advocate and excellently represent clients in the family law courts. In 2014, Shannon also became a Child and Family Investigator (CFI), and since that time she has been appointed by judicial officers across the state in more than forty cases to investigate, report, and make final recommendations to the court regarding child-related domestic disputes.  

In 2014, Shannon began extensive training and education for formal peacemaking and mediation. She has completed foundational and advanced mediation training in both the legal and Christian educational fora. By 2020, Shannon’s legal expertise and passion for peacemaking had culminated in Shannon mediating full-time. Shannon has a contract with the Colorado Office of Dispute Resolution, and she also mediates in private matters for both represented and unrepresented parties across the state. She is based in both Buena Vista and Littleton, and she also conducts mediations virtually.

Shannon trains attorneys and mediators in Colorado regarding peacemaking in legal disputes and effective communication strategies, directional listening, and motivational interviewing techniques in mediation. Shannon also educates counselors in Colorado regarding the legal process and opportunities for settling cases amicably.

Shannon has been rated by Super Lawyers as a Rising Star and Super Lawyer for six years in a row, a distinction awarded to only 2.5% of her colleagues. Shannon is a professional-level member of the Mediation Association of Colorado, as well as the Colorado Bar Association (as well as the CBA Family Law Section, CBA Alternate Dispute Resolution Section, and CBA Modern Law Practice Initiative Section), the Metropolitan Denver Interdisciplinary Committee, and the Heart of the Rockies Bar Association.

Shannon spends most of her spare time hanging out with her husband and her three sons, cycling, skiing, rafting, traveling, gardening, and gathering around a table with friends and neighbors.