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Recent Posts in Financial Incentives to Mediate Category
| February 11, 2012 |
| Announcing WEBSITE DESIGN and SEO For Mediators By Thurman Arnold |
| Posted By Thurman W. Arnold, III |
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Website Design, Development and Optimization for
Divorce and Family Law Mediation
This blog article is written for anyone who is a mediator, or who is beginning to seriously consider making the commitment to establishing a mediation practice within their community. In order to be successful, you need to be visible to the public you would serve. However, for most legal professionals how to accomplish that visibility on the Web is a deep mystery.
I believe so passionately in mediation as a highly productive, relatively inexpensive, and richly satisfying alternative to family court litigation that I want to do everything within my sphere of influence to popularize it, including helping other lawyer-mediators and nonlawyer mediators to establish and develop their own dispute resolution practices. The internet is an incredible tool for reaching out to legal consumers and educating them about the availability and benefits of this option. It is an excellent setting for showcasing our own mediation philosophies and styles. Those of us who love to mediate because of the positive differences it makes in people's lives - and in our own professional practices to the extent that we divorce attorneys become an active part of the solution, rather than problem generators - have the opportunity and possibly even the responsibility to do everything we can to have an on-line conversation with disputants about the economic and emotional perils of adversary litigation. Mediator websites are a powerful platform from which to begin that dialogue. Not only do our on-line identities represent an ethical vehicle for attracting business and so earning a living, they are tools for change in how society, and people at the end of relationship in particular, make choices about what we value. If we value relationship warfare, that is what we will experience together with all the harm it causes ourselves and others. If people recognize that it is natural to be conflicted and reactive when the emotional and economic relationship implodes, but that it is possible to manage those feelings and to choose not to let them rule our lives, then another world of choices and outcomes opens up. The goal of dissolution related mediation is to alleviate human suffering, one couple at a time.
For these reasons I've decided to offer my services to legal and mental health professionals who wish to develop a sophisticated on-line presence in the field of divorce and family law mediation. After having invested hundreds and hundreds of hours developing my own sites, and sites for others (including two nationally recognized mediation trainers), I have gained a powerful intimacy with how Google and other search engines operate. I want to apply that expertise to your advantage. I can assist you with website design, in choosing and negotiating with the right website design company (for instance, Scorpion Designs), with important feedback concerning whether to incur costs with website developers like Findlaw.com and Mediate.com, and with search engine optimization techniques and content writing. My websites speak for themselves (please feel free to browse the links at the bottom of this page, and www.LosAngelesFamilyMediationServices.com). And they speak to potential mediation clients 24/7.
If you wish to know more about the types of services I can offer you, and the reasons why utilizing these services will have a far higher impact on your customer base and the success of your mediation practices, please visit me at www.FamilyLawSEOSpecialists.com.
Thurman Arnold, III
Mediation Website Design and Optimization
Email:
twarnold@verizon.net
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| October 10, 2011 |
| MEDIATION Is the Sane Alternative - But Only If You Value Your FAMILY And Your Money! |
| Posted By Thurman W. Arnold, III, Family Law Mediator |
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DFMS Is Now (Almost) 18 Months Old!
I want to compliment and honor those of you who have seen the terrible destruction and waste that is characteristic of family court litigation, and who have been inspired by this insight to inquire about and undertake mediation with DFMS - or who have been encouraged within your locale to find peacemakers, rather than legal warriors to battle senselessly over unresolved issues relating to your marriages and domestic partnerships. Whether you retain DFMS or any other mediation firm to help you through these traumatic relational times, by opening yourself to mediated outcomes in divorce and family law conflict you become pioneers in entertaining the possibility that there is an alternative to the tone of warfare and acting-out that seems to distract and entertain a large part of our popular culture - personified by the talking heads on so much television and by our national politicians.
I have been practising law now since 1982. I have met and worked with so many unhappy individuals and couples over these long years, and owe to them some humble financial success - but I am here to suggest to you that it is possible to "STOP" and not to line the pockets of aggressive attorneys at the expense of yourself and your families. Truth be told, I bill large numbers in my litigated cases - especially those involving high conflict or significant property and support matters - but I would trade it all for helping you in designing your own destiny. I have written so much about this subject that I don't mean to bore you with repetition, yet I want to congratulate and reinforce those of you who are dissatisfied with the default adversarial system and whom are willing to investigate beyond the obvious, simplistic reactivity of thinking that tearing your former partner's heart out will somehow serve your own interests. It just isn't true.
I write this Blog tonight to honor a couple who successfully completed a complicated mediation today after about two months of mediated sessions (less than 12 hours overall). They showed such great dignity and fairness, while necessarily needing to contain and respond to their respective fears and concerns about finances and how they could move forward in this new world of single and not dual incomes, that I was almost stunned at how easy mediation can be for some. One member of this former couple had interviewed a storm trooper of a local attorney, and she recognized immediately (as she told me) that that attorney's agenda sounded hollow and self-serving and that the red flags had flared. This person chose differently, but most importantly she made a choice. Few do.
I will tell you a secret. By far the majority of divorce and family law attorneys depend upon your trance and hurt in order to earn their living. A disappointing many of them will lie, misrepresent, conceal, and vilify in order to serve their conflict agenda and to perpetuate this struggle. Certainly there are many parties to litigation who need this kind of ... "representation." The old ways won't die soon. It takes two willing parties to mediate relationship disputes. I will not make friends among by brothers and sisters in the law in making this bold statement - which is indeed an accusation (and an invitation) - and you already know it is true.
But this is the thing - lawyers can take some of your money, or they (we) can take all of it. I urge you to "wake up" instead. Save your famlies, save yourselves, and save your wallets and pocketbook and direct your own future rather than giving it over to strangers.
DFMS is now almost 18 months' old, and was the brain child of retired Riverside County Commissioner Gretchen W. Taylor and attorney-mediator Thurman W. Arnold, III, CFLS. DFMS is based in Palm Springs, but serves parties located within a 100 mile radius of the desert cities. In June, 2011, we launched Los Angeles Family Mediation Services with a tony team of seriously experienced and dedicated legal, mental health, and accounting professionals.
There is no other mediation team in the desert that has undertaken any training whatever in assisting family law litigants to avoid a government sponsored solution to relationship conflict. Our family law judges are overworked, underpaid, and pissed off. If you think that justice will be served by squaring off, you are likely going to be unpleasantly surprised. With the burdens imposed by the Elkins changes in the law, corners are being cut to the point that court divorce is a crapshoot. Good judges want you to mediate your disputes elsewhere.
But, sadly, I know that this crapshoot will not go away any time soon. I admit that anger, resentment, punishment and conflict are a disease that DFMS cannot cure. And for those folks I will ethically protect their interests to the best of my ability as a litigating attorney. But DFMS is resonating in our Coachella Valley, and a steady flow of awakened individuals are heading our way - we receive more emails and calls each and every week than before.
We offer free Orientations to outline for you and your spouse or domestic partner the landscape that you are entering. We offer premiere legal wisdom and an experience borne of many years' experience and of dealing with thousands of couples, as an antidote to the frustration and expense of lawyers and judges and the courts.
Why not consider a mediated outcome? You may not enrich the family law attorneys, but you will enrich your own lives. And, at DFMS, that is all that matters.
Thurman W. Arnold, III, Certified Family Law Specialist and Family Law Mediator
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| December 05, 2010 |
| 2011 AMENDMENTS to the FAMILY CODE: MEDIATION Becomes Even MORE ECONOMIC |
| Posted By Thurman Arnold III, CFLS |
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A disaster may be looming in 2011 for some of the California family law disputants who don't realize they are free to opt out of the litigation experience by employing mediation or collaborative law processes as an alternate method for resolving their divorce, domestic partnership dissolution, or custody conflicts.
On January 1, 2011, the Elkins Task Force recommendations take effect as newly enacted Family Code section 217, along with other sections like
revised FC 2030 and
FC 3121 which are specifically intended to increase attorney fee awards so that both sides have equal access to justice. While these changes may improve the adversary and litigation experience for the wealthiest Californians in some senses, it is not going to help most family court participants. Indeed these "improvements" if they are to materialize will only come after hugely increased lawyer's fees, frustrating calender delays and continuances, increased acrimony between the parties, and strong dissatisfaction by at least one side with a judge's rulings. These changes in the law go to the core of the administration of justice in the Family Courts. As a result mediation becomes even more practical and sensible than ever before.
The Elkins committee which authored these changes was formed in response to Chief Justice Ronald George's 2007 California Supreme Court decision which overturned a policy of the Contra Costa Superior Court that essentially required family law and divorce matters to be heard by declarations, with very little ability for either party to present direct, live testimony or to cross-examine opposing witnesses. Jeffrey Elkins v. Superior Court (2007) 41 Cal.4th 1337.
In many ways the Court's ruling was inevitable and appropriate. The adversarial system is premised on ideas of due process and evidentiary rules. We assume that when a judicial officer as the "trier of fact" is able to watch and listen to people as they tell their stories, and to allow each side to test the claims of those others who contradict them, that that judge or family court commissioner is able to discern the Truth. Family court judges tend to be extremely dedicated and wise, but the best of intentions cannot necessarily overcome budgetary and time constraints in terms of decision-making on a crowded court docket. This is one reason why many seasoned litigators present their client's cases as a series of "sound-bytes," often with inflammatory rhetoric. Sometimes this obscures the truth.
We are all familiar with "profiling," and to a less dramatic extent the unconscious biases that people - be them governmental officials or ordinary citizens - bring to the analysis of any question, but especially those involving other humans. We all have accumulated preferences and biases, and no matter how sincerely and diligently we work to overcome this trait it seems generally impossible to eliminate. There is danger in giving up the power of decision-making about your marriage, your divorce, your children, etc., to others (including mediators). This is why many mediators resist acting like Solomon and persistently attempt to hand this power back to both parties. Mediators serve as guides - judges do not.
Nonetheless, in America we have been taught to assume that the best way to resolve conflict is by permitting litigants to compete in the telling of their differing views, and to allow some presumably wiser person to umpire the contest and declare the victor. My opinion is that this adversary courtroom system is the best that exists, but only when all else fails and then as a last and never as a first resort. But I've become cynical about government's ability to do better as an entity in deciding matters affecting our lives than we do for each other as individuals. You are free to disagree.
Family Code section 217 directs family courts in all hearings, including OSC's and Motion proceedings, which are where temporary orders are obtained before cases reach a Final Judgment (and also again when people seek to modify judgments later), to hear live testimony except where the parties themselves stipulate to allow their matter to proceed by declaration alone or where the court makes a finding on the record of "good cause" to dispense with oral testimony. Oral testimony takes place in something called an "evidentiary hearing."
Because evidentiary hearings take considerable time - anywhere from 30 minutes on simple issues to several days in complex or high-conflict situations, whenever one party refuses to stipulate to forego their right to testify and confront the witnesses on the other side, special hearing dates will need to be scheduled. They certainly won't happen when the parties first arrive in court. Instead courts will have to set aside special days and times for hearing testimony, or to assign the matter to other courtrooms [which newly revised Family Code section 2330.3 seems to discourage since it recognizes the benefit of assigning cases to one judge throughout the proceedings].
Many questions arise. When then will litigated cases finally get heard? What policies will govern the huge number of cases (read: families) that circle like airplanes awaiting courtroom traffic controller instructions to land, scrambling to touch down at once? Parties to litigated cases will have even less control over concluding their cases than they ever did.
How much will it cost parties to take time off from work in order to attend repeated hearings - never knowing when they are needed or not, or to wait in courtroom hallways for their case to be dealt with - along with the attorneys that accompany them with their fee meters running? How are unrepresented parties going to perform when they are expected to themselves conduct cross-examination, or to know complicated rules of evidence?
And how are parties going to feel about each other after they've listened to the other spouse, domestic partner, or parent take the witness stand and tell the court, court clerk, bailiff, and courtroom observers what a dishonest or poor mom or dad the other party is?
Divorce litigation is about to become way more expensive and time-consuming. We invite you to do the math.
At Desert Family Mediation Services we believe that mediation is the only dignified way to begin to end the financial and emotional interconnections of your relationship. Mediation is not necessarily easy. It is not for everyone. Many people will be forced by their own desires or the attitudes of the other person to wait in the courtroom hallways endlessly. But others will be much more fortunate, and this may be you.
I predict that the consequences of the Elkins rules in the coming decade will set in motion a backlash that will result in a substantial rewrite of the laws and procedures for family law disputants, and that our coming system will be reforged borrowing many principles seen rarely today outside of mediation. For now the new family code rules are sure to pressure legal consumers to find more economic ways to manage their disputes.
Mediation looks even more practical and sensible beginning in 2011!
Thurman W. Arnold III
Hon. Gretchen W. Taylor
Certified Family Law Specialists
"You Need the Bears"
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