Last night I was part of a panel discussion at a Collaborative Practice Toronto meeting.
The topic: how mediation and collaborative practice can work together.
The panel, moderated by Lorisa Stein, featured Victoria Smith, Tom Bastedo, Marion Korn and Linda Ippolito.
The consensus was clear; there are many ways collaborative practitioners can use mediation to enhance and extend the collaborative process.
There are two obvious times when a mediator would be useful in the collaborative process: when parties reach impasse in their negotiations, and where parties have limited amounts of money to fund the process.
A mediator can work with the parties, either within the collaborative process or outside it, to help the parties engage in focused negotiations on a specific issue that has led to a deadlock. Because mediation is closed and confidential, it cannot threaten the essence of the collaborative process. Ideally the mediator would be trained collaboratively to understand the process and its principles. The type of mediation and the skills and experience of the mediator should be determined based on what kind of person and approach the parties and the issue needs.
For example, the parties may need a different negotiation approach; they may need a knowledgeable neutral; they may need someone to help them engage in hard bargaining using private “caucusing” or they may need a person from their culture or community who can help them overcome an impasse.
Such an “impasse-breaking mediator” could either work with the parties away from the collaborative process or could be part of the collaborative team and work with the lawyers and other team members present.
Mediation can also help extend the collaborative process, to those who are running out of money and may otherwise have to end the process, and also to those who may otherwise feel they cannot afford collaborative law. The use of court-connected, subsidized mediation (which does not require the parties to have a court proceeding in order to be eligible) is one way parties can extend their collaborative process by using mediation. In the case of mediate393, for example, the parties would each have a confidential intake meeting with the mediator followed by about 6 hours of mediation. After that, the mediation would end and the parties could continue with their collaborative negotiations.
As conflict resolution options grow and adapt, we are finding more ways of working together to provide clients with effective and cost-effective processes that are designed specifically to meet their needs.
It was a good discussion!
