I had the honor of presenting at the Maryland Judiciary’s ADR Research Symposium a couple of weeks ago. The purpose of the symposium was to inform judges and court personnel of the results of a six-year research project examining ADR programs and processes. It reminded me of just how well Maryland has planned and implemented its ADR system. Because it serves as a model, I’d like to provide a little background about this before discussing the research. (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘mediation’
Maryland Research Offers Insight into What Works (And What Doesn’t) in the Mediation Room
Jennifer Shack, June 29th, 2016Child Protection Perspectives: Initiating the Conversation
Just Court ADR, April 15th, 2016As April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month, we at RSI wanted to shine some attention on the work we are doing related to the development of the new Child Protection Mediation Program in the Sixteenth Judicial Circuit Court of Kane County, Illinois, as well as the other work RSI has done in using court ADR as a tool to address the issues of child abuse and neglect.
While our work at RSI is often about data, when it comes to child protection (a term which is meant to capture the broad array of cases in which children have been removed from their homes due to abuse and neglect), it is hard not to talk about the personal element. Prior to joining RSI, much of my work had been as an advocate at the intersections of special education, juvenile justice and the child welfare and foster systems. These seemingly independent worlds actually collide frequently, and illustrate some of the many complexities involved in handling cases of child abuse and neglect. (more…)
Model Mediation Surveys Are Now Available
Jennifer Shack, April 6th, 2016I’m so happy to introduce the Model Surveys, a toolkit that enables court-connected mediation programs to obtain reliable data. The toolkit includes post-mediation surveys for parties, attorneys and mediators, as well as a mediator report. The surveys are all annotated, with explanations for the rationale for each question and discussion of the wording. The toolkit is rounded out with advice on how to use and modify the surveys.
The whole idea behind the project is that courts and their associated programs often don’t have the necessary resources to obtain good information about program functioning. In RSI’s experience, the courts’ biggest need was for well-designed participant surveys and set out to develop them in collaboration with the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution and with the help of a fantastic group of nationally-known experts in ADR research and program administration. (more…)
Access to Justice and ADR: What Is Needed for Parties to Experience Justice
Jennifer Shack, November 25th, 2015It seems that a conversation is starting up between Richard Zorza on his blog and RSI’s Director of Foreclosure Mediation Hanna Kaufman about 100% access to justice and ADR. Hanna will be returning with a series of three posts that will focus on how we are addressing access to justice in our own foreclosure mediation programs, so I decided to chime in with a big-picture response.
The conversation has its origins in Resolution 5 of the Conference of Chief Justices, which sets a goal of 100% access to justice for essential civil legal needs and encourages each state to develop a strategic plan to get there. In his latest post, Zorza suggests that as part of this effort, ADR system design focus on triage, consent, the role of the neutral, the use of nonlawyers and outcome measures. I agree with most of these, and see in them the need to fully integrate ADR into the Chiefs’ efforts to achieve 100% access. (more…)
CA Confidential: How The Latest Challenges to California’s Evidence Code Undermine Mediation
Just Court ADR, November 3rd, 2015In the world of ADR news, California’s mediation confidentiality provisions are achieving “Kardashian”-like levels of fame at the moment, with a comparable amount of dramatic fireworks to boot. Since 1993, California has included in its Evidence Code provisions which guarantee mediation confidentiality and greatly limit the discovery and admission of evidence procured from mediations. However, between an initiative to rewrite the California Evidence Code and a recent decision in Delaware’s influential Court of Chancery, these protections face a challenge, one that threatens to jeopardize the reliability of mediation as a viable dispute resolution process in the Golden State. (more…)
