with the other party. Another disadvantage is the parties need to be respectful to each other while in the room. Obviously, this is a barrier for some clients. I conduct my divorce mediations in a joint session zoom process. Shuttle In a shuttle mediation process, the mediator keeps the parties and the parties’ attorneys (if attorneys are attending) separate from each other. The mediator shuttles back and forth between the rooms, Zooms or telephone calls. This process typically occurs in settlement conferences with judges or with an evaluative mediation style. To be clear, engaging in a shuttle mediation process does not necessarily mean mediating on the same day. I use a shuttle mediation process for most of my adoption and guardianship mediations and I conduct each individual mediation session on different days. I shuttle back and forth on different days until settlement is achieved. The clear advantage to this process is the parties do not have to interact with each other and they don’t have to listen to each other breathe (because we all know how listening to an ex-spouse breathe makes us hate them even more). The disadvantages to this process are many. First, this process generally triples the time it takes to mediate. How do I know this? I have been taking extensive data regarding all aspects of my mediation practice for the past ten years and the data clearly shows shuttle triples the mediation time. Second, and this is likely the main reason why mediation time is tripled, things get lost in the shuttle: definitions, agreements, etc. Once this is determined the mediator needs to clear-up the disagreement, which not only takes time but also impacts the negotiations. Third, in a shuttle model, the mediator is not telling you everything. The shuttle process allows the mediator to censor information. Therefore, if you are mediating in a shuttle process, the parties and their attorneys are negotiating in a vacuum of information. Finally, if the parties need to work together in the future (i.e. co-parents), this process does nothing to repair the relationship and continues to reinforce the other party is a jerk. For the first ten years of my practice, I mostly mediated with attorneys in the room, utilizing joint session as much as possible, and eventually, each joint session devolved into a shuttle session. Then at my decade mark, I began kicking-out the attorneys, mediated with only the parties and required we stay in joint session unless I determined otherwise. Now, I exclusively mediate all my divorces through a joint Zoom session. Guess what the data says? I can mediate a case three “Can a mediator who isn’t a licensed attorney provide good services? Yes, until they don’t; meaning nonattorney mediators don’t know what they don’t know.” Family Law Mediation continued from p. 39 40 Trial Lawyer | Summer 2024
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy Nzc3ODM=