All Blog Posts (14)

Nearly 400 people participated in the Northwest Dispute Resolution Conference this year. Presenters and participants from all over the Northwest (Washington, Oregon & Idaho), and from Arizona, California, Massachusetts, Montana, Texas, Canada & England, attended a variety of subject offerings, choosing among a total of 45 different sessions.  Participants commented the conference was “well-organized” with…

The Viola J. Taliaferro Family and Children Mediation Clinic and the Indiana University Maurer School of Law have been studying screening for intimate partner violence and/or abuse in family mediation for several years.  As a result of their studies they developed a new screening method designed to be given as an interview.  The assessment, Mediator’s Assessment of Safety Issues and Concerns or MASIC, was featured in an article in the Family Court Review in October…

Report of the ADR Section Legislative Committee

On April 5, 2013 the Washington Supreme Court entered an Order on the adoption of Collaborative Law Rules. A copy of the complete order with the proposed Rules is here: April 5 2013 Order on adoption of…

Most family law attorneys are familiar with the saying: "A good settlement is when both parties are equally unhappy." Striving for a better outcome than mutual unhappiness, more and more lawyers are learning the Collaborative process to help their clients experience a better quality divorce process. With tens of thousands of trained lawyers, and a commensurate number of satisfied clients, the growth of Collaborative Practice is reflective of its results. In a recent large-scale…

by Douglas P. Becker

Legislation has been proposed to establish collaborative law as an out-of-court system for divorces in Washington. Unfortunately collaborative law assumes an equality of knowledge, finances and determination that rarely exists. Its inherent problems have caused both the American Bar Association and Washington State Bar Association to reject the Uniform Collaborative…

Hot off the presses!  Read the Survey of Northwest Mediators (pdf), a result of in-depth interviews with over 30 Seattle and West Coast mediators.

In 2012, the WSBA Rules of Professional Conduct Committee issued Advisory Opinion #2223, concluding that lawyers acting as a mediator may not ethically write up a Property Settlement Agreement, Order of Child Support, or Parenting Plan for unrepresented parties. The Opinion does not address a mediator's Memorandum of Understanding. 



The full opinion is below and here is a direct link to the opinion on the…

ADR Legislative Committee Study: Harmonizing FFA and UMA

     Late mediation has been around for decades.  While late stage mediation (close to a trial date) may avoid trials, clients today are interested in further reducing expenses, keeping the emotional toll of litigation in check and maintaining relationships. 

     Late stage mediation results in destroyed relationships.  As the…

Lawyers are, at least in large part, problem solvers. As litigators we deal with vibrant conflict, disputants who want to resolve their differences ... or not. As transactional lawyers we deal with the possibility for conflict in the future and try to plan for it. As negotiators, we try to help our clients resolve actual or anticipated conflicts without the aid of a third party decision maker. (And we should note, litigators are sometimes transactional, and transactional lawyers are…

It’s an issue every family law attorney and mediator has seen: one spouse owns a separate property house, but sometime during the marriage the couple refinances and in their pile of closing papers is a quitclaim deed that transfers title to the couple. Fast-forward to the divorce and the question is: whose house is it?

          Back in the days when appellate courts thought trial judges had brains and divorces were equitable proceedings, this was a discretionary call. Then,…

Billions of dollars are traded by millions of people in the securities industry each year, and each year there are winners and losers.  Unfortunately, in recent years there have been infinitely more losers than winners.  The inevitable disputes that arise when investors lose money in the stock market must be carefully evaluated to sort out those investors with legitimate claims from those who simply rolled the dice in the market and now have to hope it goes back up before they…

The Uniform Collaborative Law Act, adopted unanimously by the Uniform Law Commission, was poised for consideration by the ABA House of Delegates at its February 2010 meeting.  It was withdrawn however, due to some opposition.  In Washington, supporters of the uniform Act have picked up the pace.  The WSBA ADR Executive Committee endorsed the Act and has requested that the WSBA Legislative Committee review the Act with a view to recommending its sponsorship by the WSBA. The WSBA recently…

The Arbitration Fairness Act of 2009 is pending in both the Senate and the House. S931 is in the Senate Judiciary Committee and HR1020 is pending in the Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee of the House Committee on the Judiciary.

The Act, if passed, would overturn the 5-4 Supreme Court decision in 14 PENN PLAZA LLC v. PYETT, 556 U.S. ___ (2009), 129 S. Ct. 1456,  upholding arbitration clauses in collective bargaining agreement employment contracts waiving an…