Changing the Paradigm of Who We Are: The Tensegrity of Mediation

Live Zoom webinar by Janet Seitlin, Esq., Salmon & Dulberg Dispute Resolution. Course number and 1 CLE, 1 Ethics credit pending approval. ADR Section members register for only $50, and all registrants have 90-day, on-demand access. Registration opens soon.

Description:  This is a discussion about mediator ethics and the importance of safeguarding the three basic tenets of mediation: confidentiality, neutrality, and self-determination, not just separately but together, as a unit. It is a discussion about the structure underlying these precepts that give strength and stability to the process.

Subjects to be covered include examining the old paradigms for the legal system and why they are limited in their scope.  This talk discusses how scientists have revised their understanding of how our bodies work and why it is an appropriate guide to restoring the vibrancy and responsiveness to our legal system. It explains the role of the fascia and the concepts of tensegrity in the movement of the body and how tensegrity underlies, as well, the important functions of mediation. We talk about the healing effects of a successful mediation and how the three underlying precepts of mediation are essential elements towards that end.  The lecture will explain how the mediator balances the pulls between the parties to provide leverage and support to the process so the parties can reach their own decisions. And, that the failure to support any one of the essential tenets can cause a negotiation to fail.

We look at redefining the legal system as a complex web of communications rather than as a system of rules and regulations and why it is the mediator’s responsibility to simplify those communications in a way that the parties can understand.

This lecture supports the development of critical thinking and insight as to the mediator’s approach to the profession in their daily practice. It is intended to challenge mediators to look outside the box, stimulating the participants to develop their own insight as to how they approach a mediation.  They are encouraged to examine for themselves how they talk, how they listen, what body language they use, how they observe others.  The basic theme of this workshop is that as we, as mediators and as lawyers, face a crisis in communications and that, by recommitting to the precepts that support informed decision-making by the parties, we will help re-center our practices and stabilize our legal system.

Janet Seitlin,  Florida Supreme Court Circuit Court Mediator, Adjunct Professor, University of Miami School of Law. Janet Seitlin has been a lawyer since 1980 and a mediator since 1985.  One of the first mediators certified in the state of Florida, she originally worked at the Miami-Dade County Citizens’ Dispute Settlement Center, where she mediated a variety of cases that involved neighborhood types of disputes: barking dogs, noisy neighbors, burnt laundry and one very sad, very difficult, case involving a dead parakeet.  She was the original mediator in the Victim Offender Mediation Program that gave first-time juvenile offenders the opportunity to negotiate their restitution with the victims of their crimes. She was a staff mediator for the MiamiDade County Division of Mediation and Arbitration She paired with Mark A. Schusheim, LCSW, as tandem mediators in difficult family cases. She has taught the Mediation Skills Workshop to law students and international lawyer since 1998.