About Us
Albert Einstein said “The significant problems we face today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them”. I’ve thought often about the wisdom of that statement. In the course of our lives, it can be so difficult to see the solution to our own issues. Sometimes, though, it’s easy to see the best solution to someone else’s dilemma. It all comes down to perspective
Webster’s dictionary defines mediation as:
me•di•a•tion Pronunciation: \ˌmē-dē-ˈā-shən\
(noun): The act or process of mediating; especially : intervention between conflicting parties to promote reconciliation, settlement, or compromise.
This definition is quite simple. Mediation is not rocket science, but it's not easy, either. A good mediator hears what a party has to say, and listens for what's not said. I've been doing this for most of my life, with my clients, my family, and my friends. As an attorney, I'm trained to ask tough questions. Conflict resolution doesn't come naturally to most people, and it's a learning process.
In the course of my career (before I became an attorney) I was a federal agent and a law enforcement officer. I’ve had had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with people in tough situations Different circumstances call for different methods of negotiation. We all negotiate, every day. The difficulty lies in knowing what approach is best for a given problem. If I had to boil my experience and education down to 3 words, it would be these: NEVER GIVE UP. Physically, the most difficult thing I’ve ever done was the last 6 miles of the IronMan Germany Triathlon. I take a "never give up" attitude into every mediation I conduct. Sometimes cases don’t settle right away at mediation. But given the hard work my clients and I put in at that first session, I will never give up, because we’re all invested in seeing the matter to resolution. I’ve undertaken mediations that settled 6 months after the initial session. The parties were invested in the mediation process. They all had a lot to lose if they went to trial and the jury didn’t see things their way.
The title "Alternative Dispute Resolution" sounds kind of new age, hippyish, but I promise you it’s not. What ADR does is allow people, with the help of a mediator, to come to their own resolution for civil disputes, rather than put the whole thing in the hands of a judge or a jury who doesn’t know or care about the people involved in the action.
Mediation is the only time in civil litigation that the parties control the outcome of their case. Before you leave the matter in the hands of a Judge or jury, I'd request that you ask yourself 3 simple questions:
How do you see the situation?
What do you want to see happen?
What’s going to have to take place for that to happen?