How Mediation and Wellness Training are Related

Brenda and I offer one seminar called, “Make Your Practice Look at more Like Mediation, and Less like a Cage Match,” connecting lawyer wellness with practice skills.   With a substantial part of our respective practices being mediation, we have come to understand that the skills we develop in mediation strongly influence our approach to lawyer wellness. 

Learning how to listen with empathy, understanding our own preconceived notions, and how we came to those notions, are skills that lawyers must learn to elevate their practices.  Understanding and appreciating the many approaches to resolve our clients’ conflicts provides a way of solving problems that is much less costly and less confrontational than the standard approach that we are often trained to take.  Taking that “settlement first” mentality into a case promotes a positive and optimistic view of the lawyer’s work, and it leaves our clients feeling much better about the process and much better about the result.

Now we have a 2016 landmark study and a report from the American Bar Association that confirms what we are trying to help others discover, that working hard to resolve a case short of confrontation in a lawsuit, are helpful to both the lawyer and client.  The American Bar Association report encourages law schools to teach settlement skills, and to push those skills into prominence in the curriculum, instead of simply letting the students discover those skills accidentally on their own.

We virtually participated in the Dispute Resolution 22nd Annual Spring Conference in May, 2020.  The panelists presented a timely, new paradigm -- mediation training and mindfulness instruction of law students to effectively address the serious mental health problems within the legal profession that are documented in the ABA's 2016 landmark study. The panelists discussed: (1) scientific evidence of the connection between mental health and mediation and mindfulness training; (2) proof of the benefits to law students and lawyers of mediation and mindfulness training and practice, including enhanced well-being, increased professionalism, marketability, client satisfaction, and the potential for reduced bias; and (3) reframing mediation training as an innovative and effective way to satisfy key recommendations of the ABA Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being.

While many people who present wellness training focus on what’s wrong with the lawyer who suffers these stress-related symptoms, we focus on changes you can make to your practice to make you less vulnerable to these pitfalls.  That’s the difference in our approach.