You’re a judge charged with overseeing a voluntary civil case mediation program in your court. Because you’ve been monitoring your program, you know that, though 75% of cases going through mediation are reaching agreement, the program isn’t doing much to reduce judges’ workloads because mediation generally occurs very late in the case. What do you do?
You have at least three options: (more…)
I have to admit that when there’s a new statutory mandate for courts to adopt a procedure that expedites resolution at low cost, I immediately think of it as a call for new ADR programs. I’m of course a bit biased, but I see ADR as a great way for courts to move cases more quickly and inexpensively through the judicial system. The Texas Supreme Court, though, saw it very differently and limited, rather than expanded, the use of ADR. (more…)
As a follow-up to last week’s post about interpreter services being required for all mediations, I’d like to pass along a fascinating article titled The Politics and Power of Plain Language by Jane M. Siegel, a professor at Thomas M. Cooley Law School (hat tip to Richard Zorza for highlighting this article in his recent post). Siegel references The Plain Writing Act of 2010, which requires federal agencies to write all new informational or filing documents, including (more…)
The JAMS Dispute Resolution Alert has a good article by Justin Kelly about the ten-year anniversary of the Uniform Mediation Act. Having participated in some of the deliberations during the drafting of the Act, I have been interested to see how it has been implemented.
One thing that stands out to me, even after ten years, is the lack of clarity among mediators, lawyers and the mediating public about exactly what the Act provides in terms of confidentiality. Many see the UMA as providing confidentiality of all mediation communications. In fact, what it provides is much narrower than that. (more…)
