Mediation Background And Experience
When I had been an arbitrator for a number of years, I was introduced to mediation at an American Arbitration Association workshop in 1989 entitled Role of Executive/Leader/Manager as Negotiator, Mediator and Mediator/Arbitrator. At that time there was virtually no mediation going on in Boston where I was practicing law. My partners kept telling me that, based on my role as Managing Partner, I was a natural mediator: I had great listening skills and the ability to bring conflicting views into consensus. In addition, in my years as a business lawyer I strove to keep my clients out of litigation and to find ways to, whenever possible, to settle disputes creatively and amicably. I took formal mediation training required for mediator confidentiality in Massachusetts in early 1995 and began mediating for the American Arbitration Association in Boston shortly thereafter. After I moved to California in the fall of 1997, I found that mediation was a much more established mode of dispute resolution. I promptly took the Commercial Mediator Training required by the American Arbitration Association to remain a member of their mediator panel and, in 1999, I participated in the World Intellectual Property Organization's Workshop for Mediators in Intellectual Property Disputes. In February 2000, I participated in Appellate Mediation Training sponsored by the California Court of Appeal, First Appellate Division and have been a member of that Court's Appellate Mediation Panel since that time. I also completed Advanced Appellate Mediation Training for the Court in spring, 2003.
I have mediated disputes relating to software development, sales representation agreements, rights to a copyrighted product design, zoning violations and real estate loans.
I am a member of the Mediation Subsection of the Alternative Dispute Resolution Section of the Bar Association of San Francisco, the Dispute Resolution Section of the American Bar Association and the Mediation Society of San Francisco. I serve as President and a Director of the California Dispute Resolution Council.
References and rates are available upon request.