Advocating Zealously in Mediation

Faculty: Hal Abramson and Ellen Waldman

Effective advocacy in mediation requires attorneys to consciously depart from their default practices honed in the courtroom and make thoughtful choices appropriate for mediation. This course expands the choices available to advocates seeking to enhance their representational skills in mediation by examining the three key features of effective advocacy. Participants will consider how to adopt an appropriate negotiation style, enlist assistance from the mediator, and develop and implement a tailored representative plan to achieve the full potential of the mediation process. The course is based on the insights and lessons from Abramson’s award-winning and widely used book, Mediation Representation: Advocating as a Problem-Solver in Any Country or Culture.

What you will learn:

• A framework for representation—the mediation representation triangle

• How to advocate for your client’s interests

• How to prepare a plan for representation

• How to prepare your case and client

• Suitable approaches to negotiation in a mediation

• Overcoming impediments in mediation

• Enlisting assistance from a mediator

• Choosing between joint sessions and caucuses

• Involving clients

• Dealing with adversarial opponents and aberrant mediators

• Uncovering creative solutions

• Bridging final gaps for resolution

• Resolving ethical and legal issues faced by mediation advocates

Hal Abramson is a full-time faculty member at Touro Law Center in New York State, where he teaches, trains, and writes on how attorneys can effectively represent clients in domestic and international mediations. He is an experienced domestic and international commercial mediator and has taught or trained throughout the United States as well as in China, Germany, Hungary, Italy, India, Israel, Netherlands, Russia, Switzerland, and Turkey. He served as chair of the ABA Committee that drafted its mediation representation competition rules and assisted the ICC in Paris, France, in launching its international competition. He currently serves as chair of the IMI committee in The Hague that is designing an intercultural mediator certification program. Abramson's publications include two other books, Mediation Representation: Advocating in a Problem-Solving Process (recipient of CPR 2004 Book Award) and International Conflict Resolution: Consensual ADR Processes (coauthored).

Ellen Waldman is professor of law and director of the Mediation Program at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, San Diego, California. She teaches, writes, and trains in both the mediation and bioethics arenas. She has mediated numerous disputes in a wide variety of contexts and sits on the ethics committees of both for-profit and non-profit health care institutions. Waldman has published extensively in the mediation field and will soon be publishing a book entitled Mediation Ethics: Cases and Commentaries.