In my final blog of the last four Decembers, I have reflected on the previous 525,600 minutes aka the year. Another 525,600 minutes have elapsed, and it appears that we are finally through with the pandemic. However, we are not through with Covid-19 (Or should I say that Covid -19 [Read More]
Last week’s mail brought a Los Angeles County Superior Court Jury Summons by which I am ordered to be available in March for civil jury trials at the main civil courthouse in downtown Los Angeles ….in the middle of a pandemic. Needless to say, due to the surge of the [Read More]
Recently, I posted a blog about some of the ethical issues that might arise in mediating online using a video conferencing service. While I raised several issues, I did not address how to respond to the issues. The myriad of scholars in the Online Dispute Resolution Field have done so. [Read More]
One of the issues that mediators learn about is power imbalance: one party may have more power during a negotiation than the other party. This may be due to any number of reasons. One side may have more money to fight the good fight, may have more information, expertise or [Read More]
As part of a book club group, I recently read Negotiating the Impossible: How to Break Deadlocks and Resolve Ugly Conflicts (Without Money or Muscle) by Deepak Malhotra (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. 2016). The thesis of the book is simple: to resolve any conflict, one must employ Framing, Process and Empathy. [Read More]
In my early training to be a mediator, the trainer often suggested that to help the parties reach an agreement on the really big issues, start with the small ones. Discuss the easy issues first and obtain agreement on those. This will build momentum and a sense that resolution is [Read More]
Many mediators in California will acknowledge that most parties in litigated cases do not like joint sessions and prefer to mediate using caucuses or separate sessions only. There are various reasons for this, among them a belief that counsel may lose control of the situation, that the joint session will [Read More]
Recently, I conducted a mediation in which defense counsel was very candid with me by advising that she was there only because the court ordered the mediation and her client would just assume take the matter to trial. In this connection, she further advised that her client has been taking [Read More]
