On December 3rd, the Kane County Residential Mortgage Foreclosure Mediation Program held a training seminar for program mediators and members of the bar. The event was sponsored by Northern Illinois University College of Law and the Illinois Sixteenth Judicial Circuit Court. Judge Downs opened the training by welcoming attendees and providing her perspective on how the foreclosure crisis has affected the community and the court. She then shared the impact the Foreclosure Mediation Program has had since it launched almost a year ago. Housing counselors, legal aid and lender attorneys also spoke, describing their roles in the program and the experience of the clients they serve. Professor Alan Boudreau from NIU College of Law was the final speaker and provided the perspective of the Mediation Program. Professor Boudreau explained how the program’s service providers interact and how the role of the mediator fits into the larger foreclosure picture. All of the presenters remained on-hand for a panel discussion. (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘mediation’
Foreclosure Mediation Training in Kane County a Success
Just Court ADR, December 8th, 2014How to Mediate High-Conflict Cases: Balance and Control
Jennifer Shack, October 3rd, 2014Like a lot of ADR researchers, I’m always interested to know what really happens in the black box that is the mediation session. So, when someone pries the box open to look inside, my eyes light up. Researchers have begun using conversation analysis to uncover what happens in mediation that leads to successful outcomes. (Mary Novak wrote about another example of this fascinating research method before in this blog.) The latest contribution to this research comes from Norway, with a study of 154 custody mediations.
The study by Peder Kjøs, Odd Arne Tjersland and Katrina Roen, described in “The Mediation Window: Regulation of Argumentation and Affect in Custody Mediation,” (Journal of Divorce & Remarriage, Vol 55, Issue 7, pp 527-538), focused on the 38 cases that were considered to be high-conflict. In those cases, successful mediators were found to control the course of the conversation and effectively move it between emotional content and factual content. This contrasts with the actions of the mediators in the unsuccessful mediations. Those mediators tended to steer away from emotional issues and focus more on factual ones. (more…)
The Ups and Downs of ADR Policymaking
Just Court ADR, September 17th, 2014This is the story of how a law intended to increase mediation use led to a dramatic drop-off in mediation and what was done to try to fix the error.
In April 2013, the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act came into force in England and Wales. The law cut legal aid, which formerly had been available for nearly all civil cases. In family law, legal aid for court cases was now only available for cases that involved allegations of domestic violence or child abuse. However, government funding for mediation of family case was increased by ten million pounds. (more…)
What’s Labor Day Got to Do with ADR?
Susan M. Yates, August 29th, 2014For a while in the evolution of the ADR field, when two neutrals met they would sometimes ask what the other’s “profession of origin” was. What they meant was, “what did you do before you were a mediator?” There were some unspoken questions packed in there, too. They wanted to know, are you a full-time neutral or are you really from some other profession and trying to break into this one? And mostly I think they wanted to know, are you like me? Are you a lawyer, a therapist…?
I haven’t heard this question much recently. Maybe that is partly because ADR really is sinking into our society. Kids are mediating on playgrounds and deciding in college that they want to be mediators. Young adults are getting Masters Degrees in conflict resolution and looking to change the world. More people see mediation as their first career of choice, not the one they move to when they are tired of their original plan.
Even as conflict resolution increasingly becomes part of our everyday life, I would like to pay homage to a profession of origin that seems to be lost in the haze of ADR history. Thank you to the mediators and arbitrators who came from the labor relations field. (more…)
