As a member of the Los Angeles Chapter of the Federal Bar Association and incoming Chair of the FBA's ADR Section, I'd like to wish the Central District's new Settlement Officer Panel Czar a hearty welcome to the District and to Los Angeles.
Having served on the ADR panels of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and other Bay Area superior courts, Ms. Killifer is well acquainted with the challenges facing federal attorneys, mediators, administrators and the judiciary in running the robust and highly qualified settlement officer panels that the U.S. Courts are known for.
Ms. Killefer served as an Assistant United States Attorney in San Francisco from 1989 to 2001. She served as a Deputy Chief, Civil Division, 1994-1998, and as Chief, Civil Division, 1998-2001. Prior to joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office, she served as a Trial Attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice, Torts Branch, in Washington, D.C., and as a law clerk to the Honorable Barrington D. Parker (D.D.C.). She received a B.A. from Stanford University and a J.D. from the Vermont Law School.
Welcome Gail!! We have a great community of neutrals here, all of whom are all eager to get to know you (without overwhelming you with Welcome Wagon invitations) and to assist you in any way we can with your challenging and important new position.
Thanks to the SCOTUS Blog for the following resources on the upcoming Kagan hearings. Follow SCOTUS Blog all week for commentary.
Why should negotiators be interested in the composition of the Supreme Court? Because the freedom to negotiate requires a strong rule of law culture. And because everything we negotiate assumes the enforcement of certain agreements and non-enforcement of others, of particular interest to negotiators and ADR practitioners - arbitration agreements.
More important than her religious background (Jewish) her Ivy League Credentials (Harvard) her progressive, liberal or conservative Democrat political leanings, is the prospect that Kagan's addition to the Supreme Court will result in the magic number of three women on the United States Supreme Court.
The not so secret opinion among mediators is that attorneys make settlement more difficult. Just as lawyers are heard to say that "litigation would be great if it just weren't for the clients" (a "problem" only class action plaintiffs' lawyers have actually resolved), mediators tend to say "mediation would great if it weren't for the lawyers."
Esteeming the rule of law in America as I do (especially in the recent era of its greatest peril) I have never seen lawyers as a problem in facilitating settlement of the lawsuits they have been eating, drinking, sleeping and, dating for years longer than I've spent reading their briefs and engaging in some pre-mediation telephone discussions.
I can't say lawyers are a problem because: (1) they're my job; and, (2) they're "my people" in the "tribal" sense. A few bad apples aside, lawyers are among the hardest working, most ethical, creative, multi-talented professionals I know. And they are pretty much solely responsible for fighting the battle, on every common weekday, to preserve the rule of law as a bulwark against tyranny on the right and anarchy on the left.
Let's start with this particularly widespread canard from the article:
Attorneys may delay the settlement of a dispute through mediation for financial reasons. For example, the payment of professional fees on the basis of hours worked could motivate the attorney to delay the settlement of the dispute to increase the number of hours billed to the client (citations omitted). Such non financial reasons as a desire to build or preserve a reputation for “hardball negotiating” in highly publicized cases could also motivate an attorney to delay settlement of the dispute [which the authors don't mention often results in a far better outcome for the client]. In addition, attorneys’ (or their clients’) commitment to or belief in their case based on questions of justice or other principles [which are worth, in my opinion, greater attention that purely monetary outcomes] could also delay settlement until “defending the principle becomes too costly” (citation omitted). Finally, attorneys may wish to justify both their role and their fees with unnecessary interactions./1
Are we mendacious, self-serving, parasites of the "justice system," feathering our own comfortable nests as we attempt to preserve the "outdated" notion that the justice system is capable of delivering justice? I don't believe so, but let's not get all anecdotal about these questions when we have cold, hard statistics within reach. What were the results of this study on the way in which attorneys might "get in the way of" a successful mediation?
Here's the bottom line assessment (please read the article yourself to draw your own conclusions).
The empirical data we collected in this study indicate that the presence of an attorney in a mediation does not significantly affect the settlement rate, the time needed to reach an agreement, the perceived fairness of the process, the parties’ level of satisfaction with the agreement, or the parties’ level of trust that the agreement will be honored. These results indicate that attorneys have much less impact than is claimed by those mediators who do not welcome their involvement in the mediation process.
Nevertheless, the results also demonstrate that the presence of an attorney does affect mediation outcomes in at least two ways: by reducing the parties’ level of satisfaction with the mediator’s performance and by reducing the level of reconciliation between parties.
So the Myth Busters of this study conclude that attorneys:
don't "significantly affect the settlement rate" /2
don't significantly affect "the perceived fairness of the process";
don't significantly affect "the parties' level of satisfaction with the agreement; and,
don't significantly affect the "parties' level of trust that the agreement will be honored."
This is the subjective viewpoint of the litigants, mind you, in a dynamic where the mediator often openly attributes the success of the mediation to the clients' attorney - an observation which is more deeply true than most mediators would care to admit with all their white horse hi-ho silver, magic bullet off-to the-rescue enthusiasm.
What did litigants report to the authors of this article? They indicated that attorneys adversely affected mediation outcomes in two ways: (1) they reduced the parties' "level of satisfaction with the mediator's performance"; and, (2) they "reduced the level of reconciliation between the parties."
Of all of the purported effects of attorneys' presence at mediation - without whom, it must be noted, the parties would not likely be induced to sit down and mediate at all -- the only significant perceived difference is the failure of the mediation process to reconcile the parties - something in which the legal system has little to no interest.
Please read the article for proposed solutions to the reconciliation issue. As to the remainder of the study's findings, I have this to say:
whenever two or more people are gathered together, the dynamics of the group more profoundly affect the outcome than do the contributions of any individual member of the group. Our "reality," especially as it appears in a group setting, is "co-created." See the New York Times must-read article on the Psychology of Terrorism and Retail Marketing at Google Books (the latter noting that because people live in a social world which is co-created in social interaction with others . . . . [they] can be thought of as both products and producers of the social world." Id. at 218.)
try as you may, you will never be able to untangle the threads that create the intricate tapestry of a settlement; every member contributes something invaluable without which the precise result could not possibly have been achieved.
who is therefore responsible for the good and who responsible for the purportedly bad results of mediation? That's easy: EVERYONE IS.
That being the case, we are all responsible for our outcomes - whether our contribution is "negative," i.e., resisting settlement, for instance, or "positive," i.e., problem solving the reasons given by Mr. Negative that the case simply can't settle on terms acceptable to all. Remember your University philosophy class? Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis. We need people willing to state the negative to problem solve it positively. The relationships cause the outcome, not one member of a group unless that member is a tyrant with loyal troops at his command.
If you'll allow me a literary reference that justifies my own collegiate career and says far more eloquently than I ever could why we're all accountable, I first give you one of my favorite authors, Paul Auster (who you may remember as the screenwriter of the movie Smoke).
The world can never be assumed to exist. It comes into being only in the act of moving towards it. Ese est percipii. Nothing can be taken for granted: we do not find ourselves in the midst of an already established world, we do not, as if by preordained birthright, automatically take possession of our surroundings. Each moment,each thing, must be earned, wrested away from the confusion of inert matter, by a steadiness of gaze, a purity of perception so intense that the effort, in itself, takes on the value of a religious act. The slate has been wiped clean. It is up to [us] to write [our] own book.Paul Auster,The Decisive MomentfromThe Art of Hunger.
The second excerpt I will leave for your thoughtful consideration is by the greatest scholar of comparative religions to ever inhabit the planet - Joseph Campbell (skip the intro with the new age music).
Schopenhauer, in his splendid essay called "On an Apparent Intention in the Fate of the Individual," points out that when you reach an advanced age and look back over your lifetime, it can seem to have had a consistent order and plan, as though composed by some novelist. Events that when they occurred had seemed accidental and of little moment turn out to have been indispensable factors in the composition of a consistent plot. So who composed that plot? Schopenhauer suggests that just as your dreams are composed by an aspect of yourself of which your consciousness is unaware, so, too, your whole life is composed by the will within you. And just as people whom you will have met apparently by mere chance became leading agents in the structuring of your life, so, too, will you have served unknowingly as an agent, giving meaning to the lives of others, The whole thing gears together like one big symphony, with everything unconsciously structuring everything else. And Schopenhauer concludes that it is as though our lives were the features of the one great dream of a single dreamer in which all the dream characters dream, too; so that everything links to everything else, moved by the one will to life which is the universal will in nature.
It’s a magnificent idea – an idea that appears in India in the mythic image of the Net of Indra, which is a net of gems, where at every crossing of one thread over another there is a gem reflecting all the other reflective gems. Everything arises in mutual relation to everything else, so you can’t blame anybody for anything. It is even as though there were a single intention behind it all, which always makes some kind of sense, though none of us knows what the sense might be, or has lived the life that he quite intended.
Lawyers, mediators, clients, experts, consultants, legal assistants, and, yes, even your spouse with whom you consulted before today's mediation, every one of them is part of the "net of gems, where at every crossing of one thread over another there is a gem reflecting all the other reflective gems [so that] [e]verything arises in mutual relation to everything else, so you can't blame anybody for anything" and, by the way, we can't credit credit nor bear all the responsibility for anything. We are all capable. We are all accountable. And we all contribute something to the whole.
So we can stop pretending to be better than we are now. We can all put down the burden and shame of our own entirely human fallibility; the myth that we ever do anything without the contribution of others; and, the pretense that we don't behave as badly, or as well, as other people do. We're part of the team. We're in it together. Isn't that good news for the New Year?
And to give you a treat from having gotten this far, a scene that is all about seeing, from Paul Auster's Smoke.
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1/ I'd be interested, of course, in what the authors consider to be "unnecessary interactions."
2/ This is a particularly interesting finding since mediators have also been found not to improve the settlement rate but only greater party satisfaction in several studies.
Don Philbin, the author of this must-read article (click on the image for the .pdf) on the reasons you walk away from negotiations fearing you've either left money on the table or paid too much for what you receive in exchange, is an attorney-mediator, negotiation consultant and trainer, and arbitrator.
Don is listed in The Best Lawyers in America (Dispute Resolution), The Best Lawyers in San Antonio, and the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers.
Don's ADR Toolbox where this article can also be found is an indispensable resource for all attorneys negotiating the settlement of a lawsuit or a business deal (wait a minute! the negotiation of a settlement is a business deal!)
And, it's not inconsequential that Don is one of the nicest guys I know. If you're going to spend a day or a week or a month with a mediator or an arbitrator, you deserve not only the brightest, most wise and best prepared arbitrator or mediator, you also deserve to have a little fun in the process because . . . you know . . . the money simply isn't worth the unhappiness that comes when dealing with . . . . the other sort too often.
After three years of negotiation and general ADR blogging, I feel the need to narrow my Negotiation Blog posts and expand my IP ADR Blog posts to the type of work that consumed the vast bulk of my 25-year litigation and trial career – general commercial litigation.
Because Doug, Lee Jay and I spent the entire day yesterday talking about legal rights and remedies as well as legal procedure in the context of negotiating the resolution of litigation, I was once again engaged in the soul-searching that always accompanies situations challenging my loyalty to the adversarial/rights-remedies business and stimulates my enthusiasm for the interest-based, consensus building, collaborative, problem solving negotiated resolution business.
Before giving you an excerpt that should tempt you to download the article and put it on your nightstand, I want to say this: I work on the razor's edge of my lifetime career-investment in the adversarial system, on the one hand, and my new'ish passion for collaborative, interest-based negotiated resolutions to disputes, on the other. I spent 25 years as a warrior who rightfully took advantage of my adversary's weaknesses. I was not a problem solver. I was engaged in a fight to the death on a pre-determined field with rules in which I believed for causes I knew to be just. As a result, I approach all alternatives to the adversarial process with a litigator's skepticism, wariness and world-wearyness. There is no kumbya in me. It is only my intellectual curiosity that survived the beating my heart took from the world-weary, cynical, grizzled old defense attorneys who taught me how to practice law (as adversaries testing my mettle) in Sacramento thirty years ago.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
The engine that drives litigation's morality tale is that conflict resolution is a contest between parties, one of whom necessarily represents good and the other necessarily represents bad. As a result, litigation seeks to designate who has committed moral transgressions by breaching legal norms (or, from the perspective of the defendant, who wrongfully accuses others of having done so).
The Story of Mediation subverts these norms by transforming this familiar morality tale into a story of collaboration. This subversion begins through how mediation conceives of conflict itself. Implicit in the Story of Litigation is that conflict represents a breach of the norms of conduct, thereby ripping the social fabric in some way large or small. In contrast, in mediation, conflict is a norm of conduct, a necessary byproduct of humans having distinct experiences and personalities and needs. Conflict is thus not necessarily a disruption of the moral order, and, indeed, can sometimes be productive.
Mediation's normalization of conflict, however, cannot eliminate what appears to be a deep-seated human need to understand experience in terms of struggles and strivings. Humans have great difficulty perceiving events as generated by causes beyond our control - what Amsterdam and Bruner evocatively describe as an inability to see events as "One Damn Thing After Another." We must instead "shape them into strivings and adversities, contests and rewards, vanquishings and setbacks."
The meta-narrative of litigation maps these "strivings" and "vanquishings" onto the struggle of one party against another and enlists the aid of the court to vindicate justice on behalf of the wronged party. In contrast, the meta-narrative of mediation seeks to map these "strivings" and "vanquishings" onto a collaborative struggle to resolve conflict. This narrative casts all participants as players in a process - collaboration - that is focused on reaching the common goal of successfully resolving or transforming a dispute. This story has moral entailments because collaboration is accepted as a social and moral good. Unlike litigation, however, this story does not generate a binary moral universe that divides the good from the bad, but, rather, a universe that values collaborative striving to achieve common ground and resolution.
This story places mediators in a role that is very different from the role played by decision-makers in litigation. Rather than being heroes of moral vindication to whom wronged parties appeal for justice, mediators promote and model collaborative striving to overcome conflict. This plays out in many accepted techniques in mediation. Mediators, for example, often seek "commitment" from participants to the process of mediation, although mediators are careful not to extend this commitment to a commitment to agree. This commitment to process is a proxy for a commitment to collaborate to seek to resolve conflict, thus incrementally moving participants away from contested litigation and towards collaborative problem solving. Similarly, mediators often "reframe" participants' statements in order to emphasize "common ground." This is also an effort to move parties away from a morally charged contest and into collaboration. Finally, mediators encourage and model collaboration through a positive message of optimism and progress towards resolution, even when (or, perhaps, especially when) impasse appears likely.
Moreover, mediation approaches the narrative movement from Efforts to Restoration of Steady State in a very different way than litigation. Whether the Steady State is Restored or Transformed constitutes what I have earlier characterized as a "fork in the road" in the Austere Definition of Narrative. The very language through which litigants seek redress of grievances - to "be made whole," "to pay your debt society" (with its implication that payment of the debt would return the ledger to balance), even the word "remedy" - implies Restoration. In contrast, mediation tends to reject Restoration as a state to which the parties (and society as whole) should or even can return. Rather, mediation seeks Transformation on the part of all disputants so that conflict is resolved. It does so by embracing the notion that perceptions of the world (including perceptions of the actions of others) are unstable, thus enabling parties to appreciate alternative perspectives as a way to promote resolution of conflict. Mediation, therefore, does embody a plot that adheres to the narrative movement described by the Austere Definition, albeit in ways that are utterly alien to the morality tale of the story of litigation. The story of mediation can be characterized as follows:
Steady State: Whatever Each Party Views as Pre-Conflict
Trouble: Whatever Each Party Views as Constituting Conflict
Efforts: Collaborative Striving To Overcome Conflict as Modeled and Promoted by Mediator
Transformation of Steady State: A New Relationship Among Parties
I hereby agree to submit to binding arbitration all disputes and claims arising out of the submission of this application. I further agree, in the event that I am hired by the company, that all disputes that cannot be resolved by informal internal resolution which might arise out of my employment with the company, whether during or after that employment, will be submitted to binding arbitration. I agree that such arbitration shall be conducted under the rules of the American Arbitration Association. This application contains the entire agreement between the parties with regard to dispute resolution, and there are no other agreements as to dispute resolution, either oral or written.
This decision is made more interesting by the recent Parada decision (.pdf) (covered here and here) where the drafter's failure to attach the JAMS arbitration rules cited in the agreement was one of the reasons the Court concluded the arbitration clause was substantively unconscionable. I think it's safe to say at this point in the development of California law on these issues that it's not malpractice for an attorney to fail to draft an enforceable arbitration clause. But as the opinions multiply, you can be sure some employer will be looking around for someone to name its legal counsel as the source of his discontent, blame its law firm for having to bear the expense of litigation, and claim damages as a result.
The best protection for drafters of arbitration clauses (particularly in California where the Courts remain suspicious of adhesion arbitration contracts) is to be familiar with all the case law on the topic in the last five years; to avoid any provision the Courts have used to tip the "sliding scale" in favor of non-enforcement and include those provisions which favorably incline the courts to enforce the clauses.
Patrick Deane of Nestlé is senior counsel to the largest food company in the world, and the disputes he runs into involve distributors, retailers, suppliers and consumers in every part of the globe. His ideal mediator combines logic and intuition; a concern for detail; and the knack of an epatheic listener. He noted that commercial disputes — even financial ones — are seldom dry, but instead involve personalities, risk of loss of face, and other human attributes just as much as more personal claims do. The question of subject-matter expertise was of little importance to Deane, compared to these essential qualities in a mediator who must be expert in a process that, at heart, is aimed at cost effectiveness. “A lack of industry expertise has never caused a failure of the mediation process.
I must admit that when Tim Hughes (@vaconstruction) -- he of the Virginia Real Estate, Land Use and Construction Law blog and an avid ADR watcher -- tipped me off to this post, I read the question as asking whether mediators should be experts in the "field" of conflict - rather than in the industry in which the disputants are involved.
Here's my opinion (as if you didn't already know). As Colin Powell says, the most important knowledge to have in international negotiations is the other guy's decision cycle. I imagine the great predictor, the political scientist and Hoover Institute Fellow Bruce Bueno de Mesquitas would say something along the same lines (see TED lecture below). See also the NYT piece, Can Game Theory Predict When Iran Will Get the Bomb?
What is the "other guy's" decision cycle? It is comprised of every interest he must satisfy and every person he is accountable to for the foreseeable (and probable unintended) consequences of that decision. Personal injury attorneys turned mediators are well acquainted with the decision cycles of both Plaintiff and Defense counsel as well as with the interests, needs, and desires of injured Plaintiffs, on the one hand, and insurance adjusters and their supervisors on the other. Employment attorneys turned mediators are also deeply knowledgeable about the decision cycles of counsel on both sides of the table (one usually specializing in employees and the other in employers) as well as with the interests, needs and desires of terminated, demoted, or harassed employees on the one hand and of employers - both large and small - who often feel as if the Plaintiff is little better than a highway robber. Judges turned mediators are better acquainted than anyone else of the decision cycles of juries -- a jury verdict being the alternative to a negotiated resolution.
You knew I'd come to my own "specialty" knowledge. Some of it is industry specific -- insurance and financial institutions, for instance, and the garment, manufacturing, health care, commercial real estate, construction, and technology industries. Though my experience in these fields adds some value to my commercial mediation practice, what I'm most skilled at is knowing the decision cycles of commercial litigators and their business clients. I understand, for instance, the clients' reporting relationships; the metrics against which their performance and that of their corporate superiors are measured; the impact of SEC reporting requirements in "bet the company" litigation; and, the effect settlements in nine or ten figures might have on upcoming plans for mergers or acquisitions.
I can read a financial statement.
At a minimum, I can ask the questions necessary to obtain the knowledge required to ascertain the interests that must be satisfied by both parties to transform the litigation into an opportunity to make a business deal. And I know how to make the commercial clients happy with their attorneys' final resolution of the business problem burdened with the justice issue that brought the case into court in the first instance.
I am also schooled in the "field" of conflict resolution. I understand at depth the cognitive biases -- universal tendencies in the way we think -- that inhibit rational decision making. I know how conflict escalates and, more importantly, how it can be deescalated. I understand the role emotion plays in decision making (particularly the emotion most common among business litigation clients - anger); the gentle (and not so gentle) art of persuasion and, perhaps most importantly, the optimal negotiation strategies and tactics for the business problem at hand.
And, I know in the knuckles of my spine what keeps commercial litigators awake at night, worrying about the next strategic, tactical, legal or extra-legal move to make; how to explain to the client that the case has suddenly gone south; and, how to deliver that bad news to the client in a way he or she can hear it and successfully report it to the GC, the CEO, the Board of Directors or e ven the shareholders.
I know this sounds like a lot of boastful self-promotion (it is). Please don't take my word for it. Anyone charged with finding, retaining and hiring a mediator to assist the parties in resolving a piece of hard-fought, sophisticated, complex commercial litigation would do well to check with his or her peers on any mediator's boastful self-appraisals.
This is what I recall of mediator-hunting, however. I'd send out a list to my colleagues. I'd invariably get back opinions that were all over the board. He/she is great with clients but usually ends up splitting the baby in half. He/she talks too much and listens too little. He/she marginalized the client and made me look bad. He/she charges $15,000 per day and is one of the go-to mediators for this type of case but I was unimpressed, as was the client. This guy/gal can settle anything. Brilliant. Magical.
So what's a beleaguered litigator to do? Ask people you respect both inside and outside your law firm. Ask how the mediator handles the "process dimensions" of the mediation. Does he/she simply carry numbers and rationales back and forth between separate caucus rooms. Can she give bad news to both sides. Can he go beyond positional, zero-sum bargaining and into interest-based negotiated resolutions? Is the client happy with the result and with the process? After you've done this basic research, call the mediator yourself and ask him/her about the way in which she/he might handle the mediation of the particular matter you need to have resolved. You should not only have the best information possible in making your choice, you should get a fair amount of terrific free advice and external brain-storming along the way.
I really just meant to cite the Business Conflict Blog and get back to revising The ABC's of Conflict Resolution - my second draft due on October 30.
So what's my answer to the question whether the mediator should have industry knowledge? That answer lies, as most legal problems do, in the gray zone. Industry knowledge helps. But every commercial litigator knows that we can learn any industry if we have a basic understanding of how commercial enterprises work. That's what I know -- commercial litigation -- and it is the reason I don't mediate personal injury or employment disputes with anyone below the rank of senior executive. I don't know the right questions to ask and I don't know -- at depth -- the parties' or counsel's decision cycles.
I know I've left a lot of fine mediators out of this list but these are the ones who immediately spring to mind because I either have personal experience as a client or co-mediator or I have it on the authority of my husband, Stephen N. Goldberg, formerly at Heller and now at Dickstein Shapiro (author of the Catastrophic Insurance Coverage blog).
Enough! Off to the real brains at hand -- Bruce Bueno de Mesquita at TED.
From Diana Skaggs'
Louisville Divorce Law Journal -
"In browsing [Victoria's ADR blogs] you'll no doubt stumble upon some
information that will make you wonder how you could have practiced law
without it. Subscribe to the feeds and you'll regularly receive some of the
best CLE on the net. I wish it were required reading for all mediators."
I'm an attorney who is currently a Masters Degree candidate in
Mediation and Conflict Studies. I do not have much time to read
blogs. Thanks to the Settle It Now Negotiation Blog, I do not need
to. Your posts possess the perfect blend of thought-provoking
content and practical tools for anyone working in the trenches of
dispute resolution. I look forward to reading the blog because I
know its content will always be highly relevant to the issues I
grapple with, both as an attorney and as a mediator. Thank you for
providing us with such a great free resource. - Juliana Hoyt,
attorney and mediation student, Vermont.
Gail Killifer has been actively mediating with Killefer Mediation for the past nine years. In addition to her mediation experience, knowledge and training, she brings to the new job an unusual depth of academic experience from her nine years as an Adjunct Professor at U.C. Hastings College of the Law where she taught mediation to law students.
The not so secret opinion among mediators is that attorneys make settlement more difficult. Just as lawyers are heard to say that "litigation would be great if it just weren't for the clients" (a "problem" only class action plaintiffs' lawyers have actually resolved), mediators tend to say "mediation would great if it weren't for the lawyers." 
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I taught legal process in the context of mediating litigated cases yesterday at the 
