Advanced Mediation Skill Development: Perfecting Our Craft (Revised Course)

Faculty: Nina Meierding and Bruce Edwards

Please fill out the application and submit to Lori Rushford at lori.rushford@pepperdine.edu. If you do not meet the qualifications for attending Advanced Mediation, other advanced classes to consider are It's all so Real: Real Problems for Real Mediators in Real Time and Preventing Bad Settlement Decisions and Impasse. We also have other specialized areas such as Family Law, Mindfulness, and Conflict Resolution Consulting. Please read through the list of classes for course descriptions.

**Includes 2 CLE hours of Ethics and 2 CLE hours of Elimination of Bias.

A highly interactive, skill enhancement course facilitated by experienced trainers with a combined 8,000 mediations and over sixty years of mediation and training experience. This course invites you to work closely with other experienced mediators sharing expertise and skills. Fish bowl role-plays will provide real time reflection, instant feedback, and discussion of techniques. You will have the opportunity to engage in thought provoking conversations about cutting edge topics, reflecting the latest learning and trends effecting our profession. To provide the optimal learning environment, this course will be limited enrollment and available only through an application process evidencing a minimum of 40 hours of training and over 40 or more solo mediations.

Please fill out and submit the application below:

Advanced Mediation Application

Join us in taking your skills, and your career to the next level as you learn:

Techniques that are customized to the different stages of mediation (early, mid-stage, and late-stage negotiations)
Strategies in working with highly competitive parties and attorneys – including highly experienced parties/attorneys who seek to control the process, "game" or "tactic" the mediator
Diagnosis of sources of resistance and specific strategies for different sources of impasse
Skills for working with high emotion
Knowledge of communication issues across cultures and understanding the concept of implicit bias
Use of questions to build rapport, change tempo, detoxify, summarize, shift power, reality test, transition, provide options
Approaches to expanding your practice beyond "cases" - brainstorming how to use our skills beyond the traditional litigated case and expanding our market
Creativity beyond the "deal" – sharing results that experienced mediators seek beyond just a settlement, including the art and science of the apology
Pre-mediation and post-mediation strategies that are appreciated in the market and will make your practice stand out from the other providers
Ethical issues that mediators face due to the changing nature of the field

Nina Meierding, a former civil attorney, has been a national leader in the field of conflict resolution, training thousands of individuals in businesses, courts, school districts, governmental agencies, medical centers, corporations, and universities throughout the United States and abroad for almost 30 years. She has been an adjunct professor at Pepperdine University Caruso School of Law for over 20 years and Southern Methodist University for over 15 years and has taught at many other universities, as well as the National Judicial College and the California Judicial College. She is a former president of the Academy of Family Mediators and served on the board of directors of the Association for Conflict Resolution and many other organizations. She was the director and senior mediator at the Mediation Center in Ventura, California, from 1985 to 2007 where she mediated over 4,000 disputes and is currently the mediation partner and consultant for the Wisconsin Special Education Mediation System (WSEMS).

Bruce Edwards was an industry pioneer in the field of alternative dispute resolution. Since 1986 he has mediated over 6,000 disputes throughout the United States involving complex multi-party lawsuits and specializing in matters of high emotion. Since 1993 Edwards has served as an adjunct professor at the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution at Pepperdine University Caruso School of Law where he teaches courses in advanced mediation. In addition to his teaching in the United States, Edwards has personally taught mediation skills to hundreds of attorneys, judges, business leaders and aspiring mediators throughout Europe, Africa, India and Asia. Most recently, he has cofounded the Edwards Mediation Academy, an online education platform for teaching practical mediation skills to a global audience.