As family law mediators, we journey into the “guts and bellies” of people’s lives. How do you get mediation clients to trust you? Who wants to air “dirty laundry” to a stranger? How do you get someone to feel comfortable enough to share what brought on the decline of their relationship? Essentially, what led them to you? I have done …
MORE
Category Archives: Collaborative Practice
Building Rapport with Your Mediation Clients
Ontario family mediation: World class excellence
Originally published in The Lawyer’s Daily, June 30, 2021. If Gary Joseph’s opinion is reflective of what Ontario lawyers know about family mediation practice in our province, (June 22, 2021, “Mediation: The unregulated profession“) some serious correction is called for. Family mediation has been a highly functional self-regulating profession since 1984 when Family Mediation Canada (FMC) was created by the …
MORE
The Promise of Family Mediation-Arbitration: Is it Real?
The crisis in access to family law justice has led to many great things happening outside of court. Collaborative practice, for example, has grown from disenchantment with the adversarial legal system’s assumption that positional bargaining necessarily protects the interest of parents and their children. Family mediation has become the go-to solution for both the public– seeking to avoid paying lawyers– …
MORE
Reviewing the Best Book a Family Law Lawyer Could Read in 2017
This book was published in late 2017, and its title is a mouth full; Settling Family Law Cases: Practical Techniques for Advocates and Neutrals. However, the book itself is in chewable pieces, many of which are truly savoured. The author is Mr. Lorne Wolfson, a Toronto family lawyer, mediator, arbitrator, and partner at Torkin Manes. However, this is not really …
MORE
From Jennifer Lawrence to Aceh, Indonesia
The annual United Nations Commission on the Status of Women is an inspiring event that, in a perfect world, every single woman should attend. Attending as a Canadian mediator and trainer, I was struck by how much is happening in the rest of the world that is unfamiliar to me in my privileged “first” world life. It is an eye-opening, …
MORE
Save the Date for Mediators Beyond Borders International’s Parallel Event at the 61st session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW61)
I am honoured to be joining several highly accomplished women mediators, negotiators and leaders in New York for this exciting panel “Peacebuilding Beyond 2017: Women as Agents of Change” on Tuesday, March 21st. Our dialogue will explore how we can foster gender equity and create lasting economic empowerment opportunities for women. The event, sponsored by Mediators Beyond Borders International, is …
MORE
Mediate Like a Roman
What does a mediator do? In helping to understand what a mediator is & what a mediator does I have gone to Latin sources. I refer the reader to the Latin word interpres (which came to me on my phone today as my Latin Word of the Day). This word means a middleman, “an agent between two parties, mediator, broker, …
MORE
Professionalism & Ethics in Family Law: The Other 90%
NOTE: Deanne Sowter* recently wrote and contributed this article to the Winkler Institue for Dispute Resolution website As the 2015/16 OBA Foundation Chief Justice of Ontario Fellow in Legal Ethics and Professionalism Studies, and with the support of The Winkler Institute for Dispute Resolution, I am conducting a research project on the links between research and practice, involving empirical research on ethical …
MORE
