I had the pleasure of being taken to lunch yesterday at the English Law Society in Chancery Lane, London by Boston mediator Diane Levin and her husband, Steve whilst they visit United Kingdom.
Diane runs a successful mediation practice which focuses on mediation, consultancy and training.
We have got to know each other on the back of our blogs.
As I have just qualified as a mediator I was particularly delighted to meet Diane.
The three of us had a very interesting discussion.
Some of the issues we covered included:
1 A danger that some law practitioners who want to set in mediation practices face is that they can just try to focus on mediation when they need other sources of income, not just the physical mediations.
2 Within the United States which has a far more developed mediation culture, there is more emphasis on providing mentoring with the new mediators than I have experienced here in the UK. I also explained that I had to take an exam to qualify as a mediator in the UK.
3 I brought up the issue of technology and expressed my concern that new technologies such as software could make role of the mediator redundant. Diane and Steve were not that concerned and felt that you would always have a need for a human being mediator. One of the reasons for this may be the intuitive nature of mediation.
P.S - Both Diane and I expressed a preference that the less we knew about the case, the better for doing mediations. In other words we do not want lots of papers prior to doing a mediation.