Event Title: POSTPONED-We Have to Stop Meeting Like This: Joint Sessions Revisited With Gary Friedman and Richard Collier
Event Type: MCLE Program
Location:
Zoom details will be emailed to TMS Members who register for this event.
Please forward Zoom details to your Guests, as TMS will not email any Guests directly.
This program will qualify for 1.5 hours of MCLE Credit.
Please verify your attendance with the event Chair to receive MCLE credit.
Presenter: Richard Collier and Gary Friedman
Date: Thursday, May 6, 2021
Time: 5-5:30pm Social
5:30-7pm Program
Description:
Mediation through caucus meetings has become the norm, largely by default. Why, and is this OK? Why as mediators do we choose to have the participants meet separately or together? What underlying values and aspirations are reflected or implemented in making that choice? Gary Friedman and Richard Collier will present their own histories and experiences in offering answers to these questions. Then there will be a shared discussion about the values of caucus versus joint session. Then TOGETHER we can have a deeper conversation about the values of caucusing versus joint session. Come prepared to engage and dive in!
We encourage you to invite friends and colleagues, especially lawyers you encounter in mediation who resist joint sessions. The more, the merrier – and the more perspectives, the better!
About our Presenters:
Richard Collier recently retired from the practice of law after forty years in practice. Now with ADR Services, Inc., he maintains the mediation practice that he began in 1993. He has mediated hundreds of cases across a wide range of commercial disputes including multi-party, multi-million dollar settlements but focusing on disputes involving highly emotional dynamics – partnership break-ups, bad faith insurance and business disputes, and particularly inheritance contests. His respect for the non-legal, human issues, as well as his thorough preparation to understand the law and the facts that shape the legal issues, allow him to build credibility with the parties and their counsel and craft creative scenarios to ensure resolution.Richard is a Past President of the Mediation Society, and continues to serve on the Society’s Board. He has served on the Northern District of California’s ADR Program as a mediator and neutral evaluator since 1993 and has served frequently as an instructor and trainer for the program. He serves on the Mediator and Arbitrator panels for ADR Services, Inc. and for the American Arbitration Association.
His first career was as an Assistant Professor in the English Department at UC Berkeley, where he was awarded a Distinguished Teacher Award.
Gary J. Friedman has been practicing law as a mediator with Mediation Law Offices in Mill Valley, California, since 1976, integrating principles of mediation into the practice of law and the resolution of legal disputes. He has been teaching mediation since 1980 through The Center for Understanding in Conflict (formerly The Center for Mediation in Law), the non-profit organization he co-founded. Prior to his work as a mediator, he practiced law as a trial lawyer with Friedman and Friedman in Bridgeport, Connecticut. After several years as an advocate, he sought a new approach to resolving disputes through increasing the participation of the parties in the resolution of their differences. At that time, he and his colleague, Jack Himmelstein, began to develop a model of mediation—the Understanding Based Model—that is now practiced extensively in the United States and Europe.