Resources / Study / Innovation for Court ADR

Just Court ADR

The blog of Resolution Systems Institute

Posts Tagged ‘mediation’

Model Mediation Surveys Are Now Available

Jennifer Shack, April 6th, 2016

I’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, 2015

It 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, 2015

In 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…)

What is Court ADR? Clearing Up Some Misconceptions

Jennifer Shack, October 2nd, 2015

How can you make good decisions if the information you have is limited or wrong? That’s the question that drove me to the fields of research and program evaluation – good policy and effective programs are passions of mine, and there’s no way to have either without accurate, reliable information. It’s also the question that ran through my head as I read the article, “To Mediate in Court or out of Court, that is the Question” in Financier Worldwide. In the article, the author distinguishes between court and private mediation in a way that is not consistent with the wide variety of court and private mediation that exists in the United States. The article provides a good example of the misconceptions I often see in articles about mediation, misconceptions that can lead to poor decisions about the use of mediation.  (more…)

Verified by ExactMetrics