Happy Thanksgiving from all of us here at Resolution Systems Institute!
Today we are grateful for all of our staff, board members, supporters, and court ADR friends nationwide. Thank you for all you do to support RSI! We hope you have a wonderful holiday.
We are thrilled to announce that two new chapters of our Guide to Program Success are now available! RSI’s Guide to Program Success combines the expertise of Executive Director Susan Yates and Director of Research Jennifer Shack and discusses how to effectively design, manage and evaluate successful court ADR programs.
Newly released Chapter 12: Create Your Program Forms addresses how to create forms for court programs and includes a set of exemplary sample forms from courts around the United States. Chapter 13: Launch Your Program, focuses on the successful launch of a court program takes a look at things that court sometimes don’t think about when starting a program.
We hope you find these resources valuable in your work!
A small study of family mediation in Spain paints a picture of what parties and mediators believe promotes the parties’ trust in the mediator and points out differences in perspectives between the two groups. Identification of these differences can lead to improved training and professional practice, according to the researchers (Joan Albert Riera Adrover, Maria Elena Cuatrero Castaner, Juan Jose, Montano Moreno). They discuss this in their article, “Mediators’ and Disputing Parties’ Perception of Trust-Building in Family Mediation” (Negotiation and Conflict Management Research, 2019).
For the study, the researchers recruited mediators from a single mediation provider organization. The mediators notified the parties of the research project at the outset of the mediation. If the parties consented to participate in the research, a researcher would meet with the parties at the end of the third joint session and had them complete a survey. Mediators also completed a survey at this time. In all, 31 mediators and 54 parties participated in the research over the course of a year. The mediators were primarily lawyers with an average of 1-6 years’ experience .
The researchers found eight factors which the parties were significantly more likely to say built trust with their mediator than compared to the mediator group. These were:
Most of these should not be surprising. Indeed, for all of the above factors except suggesting an alternative and talking about informal matters, a majority of the mediators agreed with the parties about their importance for building trust. However, it does reinforce the notion that trust is about more than just rapport. Parties in this study trusted mediators who focused on resolution and presented alternative options to the parties.
It should be noted that there were numerous other factors for which a large majority of both mediators and parties said built trust. These included the mediator’s listening skills, fairness, impartiality, demeanor and capacity to understand the dispute. These all should be familiar to anyone involved in mediation, as they are generally considered necessary for trust-building.
This research is unique in that it matched up mediator and party perspectives on trust. It can help mediators to know what they should be emphasizing as they attempt to build trust. However, it was limited by a small sample size and lack of qualitative follow up to help elucidate the mediators’ and parties’ thinking.
On November 18, 2019, Ohio’s Portage County launched the country’s first foreclosure mediation online dispute resolution (ODR) program. The program, developed under the guidance of Portage County Common Pleas Court Judge Laurie J. Pittman, uses Court Innovations’ Matterhorn software. A press release for the program indicates that one of the goals of the program is to make the process more accessible to the public by allowing parties to work on their cases remotely. The program’s mediator Benito Antognoli explains that prior to the launch of the online program, the first in-person mediation session between borrowers and lenders often only lasted about 20-30 minutes and required the parties to attend subsequent mediations. Most often, the brevity of this first meeting stemmed from borrowers being unable to fully respond to forms from the lender’s attorney since, due to the nature of the forms, they do not have the required documentation with them. As Antognoli highlights, the difficulty of having to make accommodations and find time to attend additional mediations is often a substantial inconvenience for both parties.
However, with the new ODR program, borrowers and lenders are now able to complete this process remotely. As Antognoli describes, once a borrower has opted-in to the program they will receive an email that invites them to the platform. From there, the lender’s attorney will request various documents from the borrower, which the borrower can now submit online at their convenience. Additionally, the online platform also now allows Antognoli to be involved during the entire process and communicate with the parties regularly. Like the in-person program, the entire online process is intended to take about 90 days from start-to-finish. Ultimately, the press release notes that Judge Pittman’s hope is to expand the use of online mediation and offer ODR programs to parties involved in other types of civil disputes.
Those interested in learning more about the program or accessing the court’s press release, should please contact Antognoli at 330-298-3233.
