Mediating The Complex Case: An Emphasis on Process Design, Party Management, and Insurance Coverage
Faculty: Bruce Edwards and Geoff Sharp
This course targets experienced mediators and will emphasize the unique problems and challenges presented by the complex case. The emphasis will focus on what makes a case “complex” from the viewpoint of an experienced mediator and what skill sets must be developed and honed to prepare for the unique challenges posed. The course will be highly interactive with specific case examples ranging from construction to mass tort cases. This course will challenge the experienced practitioner to better prepare for the next level of practice. The instructors will assume that participants have attended prior mediation training and through their current practice have a basic fluency with issues of insurance coverage.
What you will learn:
- How to identify the complex case
- The importance of process design and preparation
- Techniques for managing multiple experts and parties
- Learning time management skills in an environment of impatience
- Identifying issues of insurance coverage and their practical impact on the mediation process
- Developing strategies to integrate the real world issues of insurance into the mediation to ensure a successful outcome
- Specific settlement techniques and breaking impasse in the complex case
- Elements of mass claims settlement agreements
- Consideration of matters for “post-settlement” mediation
Bruce Edwards is one of JAMS/Endispute's most experienced attorney mediators. He has extensive expertise in handling complex, multiparty cases with emphasis on construction, business, environmental, and traumatic personal injury matters. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of California, Davis, and his law degree from Hastings College of Law. Edwards cofounded the Bates Edwards Group in 1991 (which merged with JAMS/Endispute in 1994) after a highly successful career as a litigation partner with the San Francisco office of Sedgwick, Detert, Moran & Arnold. He has mediated over 4,000 disputes in 42 states since 1986. Edwards teaches advanced mediation courses in the United States and Western Europe.
Geoff Sharp is a commercial mediator and barrister from Wellington, New Zealand. After a term as the head of litigation at Bell Gully, a national commercial law firm, Geoff became a full-time mediator in the late 1990s specializing in litigated cases-insurance, contract, health, and construction. He was appointed chief mediator by the New Zealand Government for its "leaky building" dispute resolution program and leads a team of mediators who mediate the thousands of construction-defect cases submitted under the scheme. Geoff is a Fellow of the International Academy of Mediators, author of the award-winning mediation blog mediator blah... blah..., and described as being an "overly opinionated mediation resource."