15 Years of Orlando Mediator

This month marks fifteen years since I began writing this blog to help keep the legal community abreast of the latest goings-on in mediation, arbitration and other emerging forms of dispute resolution. This blog has been recognized as an official ABA "Blawg" by the American Bar Association, voted as a finalist for The Expert Institute Best Legal Blog in the Legal News category, as top blawgs to follow by ADR Times and a current Top 5 Dispute Resolution Blog on Feedspot.com. My first entry had to do with arbitration as a process criticized by consumer advocates and that remains true today, though it is becoming utilized by more industries in contracts and is even being employed by courts under statutory processes, like nonbinding arbitration. Some things that have changed are the remote nature of these processes, especially since Covid. These changes advanced the use of then state of the art technology like Zoom, now comfortably utilized by professionals, parties and their counsel alike. We are getting past early days of the artificial intelligence boom and looking for ways to ethically use the power of AI as a settlement tool, while maintaining the human touch that has led to deals over the past 3,000 years of this profession. My alternative dispute resolution practice has continually evolved since first becoming certified in Circuit-Civil mediation in 2001 by the Florida Supreme Court and serving as a full-time neutral since 2010. Over that time, I have helped to bring about thousands of resolutions of multi-party complex cases in state and federal trial courts. I've also facilitated post-trial settlements with appellate cases pending in Florida's 5th and 6th District Courts of Appeal which are still the only DCAs to maintain formal civil mediation programs. Courts are extremely backlogged, so as litigation costs continue to rise, early settlements make sense in regular matters. Pre-suit mediation is trending beyond statutory requirements and can be quite effective if the parties have just enough information to evaluate their positions in the potential litigation. Mediation is essential to America's courts and remains the most popular of docket-culling measures. Thanks for your readership and attention to my musings and thought leadership about all things in modern-day peacemaking.