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Recent Posts in Mediation News 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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| February 07, 2012 |
| GARY FRIEDMAN to Teach RIVERSIDE County Attorneys Mediation Skills at Upcoming Workshop |
| Posted By Desert Family Mediation Services |
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I am pleased to be this year's Chair of the Desert Bar Association's Family Law Section (FLS). Together with Barrie Roberts, Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) Director for the Riverside County Superior Courts, FLS is putting on a mediation program for family law attorneys in the Palm Springs and greater Riverside County area to introduce us to the Understanding Based Mediation Model developed by Gary J. Friedman, and as a useful tool in appropriate family law cases for helping people resolve their cases with far less strife than traditionally encountered.
The Riverside County Superior Court is launching a county-wide Family Law Mediation Panel in March, 2012, which is aimed at serving at least two purposes: 1) increasing the number of trained family law mediators to include those family law attorneys who are approved by the Courts as having significant family law background and experience and 2) creating a pool of trained mediators for the new Voluntary Settlement Conference Program (VSC) that will begin to take place in April, 2012 for selected self-represented parties to pending dissolution cases.
Gary Friedman will be putting on a four-day workshop in Palm Springs at the end of February, and in the first week of March, for lawyers who have been accepted to the new Mediation Panel (and certain non-lawyers including mental health professionals, who will be eligible to co-mediate cases with attorneys), and for those who are interested in adding mediation to their family law and civil practices but who don't qualify for the Panel. This program is made possible through the sponsorship of the Riverside County Bar Association's Dispute Resolution Services program, as well as the sponsorship of the Desert Bar Association and the Riverside Courts.
Beginning in approximately April of this year, Judge Dale Wells of the Indio Superior Court will be supervising a new VSC program in Indio on the first Monday of each month, relying upon the services of the members of the newly created Mediation Panel. Its focus for now will be directed to assisting parties without lawyers to move their divorce and family law cases to conclusion through mediation rather than litigation. We hope to expand the program to make mediation a viable alternative for resolving pending cases in our jurisdiction.
This is truly and exciting development. Approximately 15 attorneys in the greater Coachella Valley will be participating in this workshop, as well as attorneys from Hemet and downtown Riverside. This is expected to have benefits to the public beyond the Panel and VSC program, by increasing the number of trained and experienced family law mediators in our area. Mediation truly helps attorneys, even in litigated cases, to focus on compromise and resolution rather than expensive and time-consuming litigation in every case.
T.W. Arnold, Chair of the Family Law Section of the Desert Bar Association (2012)
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| March 27, 2011 |
| Announcing LOS ANGELES FAMILY MEDIATION SERVICES in Beverly Hills, California |
| Posted By Los Angeles Family Mediation Services |
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310-948-6408The DFMS Team is pleased to announce that we are launching Los Angeles Family Mediation Services (LAFMS) from our offices at 9400 Brighton Way, Suite 207, Beverly Hills, California, 90210, effective June 1, 2011.
Specializing in divorce and family law collaborative mediation, the LAFMS members consist of a retired Los Angeles family law judge, a psychologist, two certified family law specialists, and two M.F.T.'s and mental health professionals. Added together the experience of our Team exceeds 100 years of legal and mental health expertise and wisdom, accumulated in the trenches of family law, custody, and relationship conflict.
Our goal is to provide a complementary, interdisciplinary, and cost-effective resource for assisting families to move forward in constructive ways when marriages and domestic partnerships dissolve in all the cities neighboring downtown Los Angeles.
Our LAFMS website went on-line on May 26, 2011. Please visit us there if you live in the cities surrounding Los Angeles.
We want you to know that we are deeply passionate and eager to help people who would like to avoid the destruction that until very recently all soon-to-be former partners assumed was their rite of passage at relationship end, something that just isn't true. We believe that instead separating couples and partners have other positive and creative choices available to them that may serve not only the domestic disputants themselves, but also their children, their parents and siblings, and every one else with whom they come into contact.
We make a difference in people's lives, and we have a secret to share - You don't have to have an insane dissolution or other familial dispute. There exists fertile middle ground if you care to dig a bit deeper. Allow us to point the way!
The LAFMS Team is comprised of:
*Let us help get you out of this mess, intact!
Los Angeles Family Law Mediation Services |
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| March 05, 2011 |
| GRETCHEN W. TAYLOR Attends MEDIATORS BEYOND BORDERS 4th Annual Congress in LOS ANGELES |
| Posted By Desert Family Mediation Services |
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Desert Family Mediation Services and its team supports Mediators Beyond Borders with both our money contributions to this worthy organization, and our time.
The 4th Annual Congress is taking place this weekend at UCLA in Los Angeles. DFMS Mediator Gretchen W. Taylor is attending the program, and volunteered considerable hours helping to direct the fund-raising for tonight's Special Celebration honoring career mediation pioneers Kenneth Cloke and Joan Goldsmith. Authors, activists, organizers, and teachers, their wisdom and personal grace has touched people around the globe. DFMS is one of a number of mediator groups featured in tonight's tribute book as a donor.
Mediators Beyond Borders - Partnering for Peace & Reconciliation is a non-profit, humanitarian organization established to partner with communities worldwide to build their conflict resolution capacity for preventing, resolving and healing from conflict. This partnership involves the design and implementation of sustainable peace building initiatives responsive to the needs and culture of the communities, and to the history of each conflict. MBB is not a first responder, and is not prepared to intervene in the midst of violent crises.
Mediators Beyond Borders interprets "beyond borders" broadly. It acts across geographical, political, economic, societal, and cultural boundaries. MBB partners with NGO's, universities, political and activist groups, community organizations, professional societies, environmental, commercial and other entities worldwide to develop skills for group facilitation, public dialogue, strategic planning, collaborative negotiation, peer mediation, restorative justice, and public policy consensus building.
MBB considers the term mediator to be inclusive of a broad range of conflict management and resolution endeavors. Activities such as conciliation,consulting, facilitation, consensus building, conducting public dialogues, system design, restorative justice initiatives, education and capacity building to mitigate or prevent violence are all encompassed within a sweeping definition of mediator.
We wholly support this unique organization and expect to have continuing involvements with it in the future.
The DFMS Team
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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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| July 11, 2010 |
| DFMS Mediator Gretchen W. Taylor, Judge Ret. Honored by the Los Angeles Daily Journal, July 9, 2010 |
| Posted By Desert Family Mediation Services |
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The Los Angeles Daily Journal is California's principle newspaper for legal professionals, and is read by most of the lawyers in our State who are interested in current legal affairs.
It regularly features articles about and interviews with lawyers, retired judges, mediators and other specialists of note. We are pleased to announce that last week the July 9, 2010 edition featured the Hon. Gretchen W. Taylor at page one of its 'Verdicts and Settlement's Page.'
The article honoring Gretchen provides useful information about her personally and professionally. It may give you some insights into about how her mediation style and philosophy would be of service to you. It also contains endorsements of Gretchen from some of top family law practitioners in Los Angeles County.
To learn more about mediator Gretchen Taylor, please click this link!
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| June 24, 2010 |
| Welcome to our California Family Law Mediation Blog |
| Posted By Desert Family Mediation Services |
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We are pleased to announce the launch of our Palm Springs Family Law Mediation blog, with an RSS Feed available. Please click the RSS Feed link to receive our articles as they are posted.
Desert Family Mediation Services opened on June 1, 2010. Our offices are based in Palm Springs and serve the desert cities of Rancho Mirage, Cathedral City, Palm Desert, La Quinta, Indian Wells, Indio, Desert Hot Springs, Thousand Palms, Blythe, and the upper desert communities of Joshua Tree, Yucca Valley, and Twentynine Palms. However, because mediation is paced at the comfort level and convenience and participants - in stark contrast to litigation in family courtrooms - we are available to assist families within a larger radius than is possible for traditional family law. We believe the expertise and quality of our mediators and co-mediators will justify our working with couples and partners who live in Riverside, Hemet, Yucaipa, and San Bernardino.
We also mediate in Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, and the Santa Monica areas and four of our five mediators reside in those cities full time. Mediations in Los Angeles County occur at our Los Angeles Family Mediation Services locations.
Regardless whether you are able to mediate with us we hope that this Mediation Blog informs you about the potential benefits of mediating divorce and domestic partnership breakups so that you investigate whether process is right for you!
Desert Family Mediation Services
June, 2010
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