Registration is now open for TAPM’s Annual Seminar, which will focus on timely issues in our field. This all-day, virtual event will take place over Zoom. We invite you to participate and learn from our expert speakers on topics such as mediation and AI, the ethics of co-mediation, mediating with attorneys, and much more.
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Current Trends and Emerging Pathways in Mediation
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Friday, April 5, 2024, 8am-3pm Central Time (9am – 4pm Eastern Time)
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5 hours CLE/CME Pending
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$100 to members; $200 for non-members. Students can attend for $50.00 with a registration code. Contact [email protected] for the code if you don’t already have one.
Log in to your TAPM account to access the member rate.
Not a TAPM member? JOIN NOW to take advantage of the TAPM rate! $100 annual TAPM Professional membership | $50 annual Non-profit Mediator/Student membership
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Event Descriptions and Speaker Bios:
Susan Guthrie: Revolutionizing Mediation – Ethical AI Strategies for Conflict Resolution
Explore the future of conflict resolution in this 60-minute program delving into the integration of Generative AI in mediation. This session offers a comprehensive look at how AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard are transforming communication and resolution processes, while emphasizing the ethical considerations and challenges such as implicit biases in this evolving landscape. This program equips you with the knowledge to harness AI technologies effectively and responsibly, ensuring a balanced approach between innovative solutions and ethical practices in conflict management.
Susan Guthrie’s Bio: Nationally recognized as one of the Top Family Law Attorneys and Mediators in the United States, Susan Guthrie has been at the forefront of divorce practice for more than 30 years. After more than 20 years as a name partner in a leading law firm in Connecticut followed by establishing her own boutique Family Law and Mediation practice in 2012, Susan has in the past two years transitioned into one of the leading family, collaborative and mediation trainers in the world and regularly works with and consults with divorce professionals and attorneys in growing and marketing their practice for a happier and healthier life.
In 2020 Susan partnered with mediation legend, Forrest “Woody” Mosten, to create the Mosten Guthrie Academy to provide cutting edge gold-standard trainings for attorneys, mediators and other professionals. The Academy has grown in two years from one 40-Hour training program to a comprehensive curriculum of basic, advanced and specialized trainings and consulting groups for a vast family of dedicated professionals.
Susan is also an internationally well-regarded expert in online mediation and has been training colleagues and other professionals in the practical and ethical considerations of conducting their mediations online with her innovative programs and webinars for more than two years. To date, more than 24,000 dispute resolution professionals have benefited from her program and she has trained mediators in countries all around the world including programs for the American Bar Association (ABA), the Alternative Dispute Resolution Institute of Canada (ADRIC), and the National Association of Distinguished Neutrals (NADN) among others.
Susan was recently awarded the prestigious L. Randolph Lowry Award from the Southern California Mediation Association for 2020 which is presented to a member of the dispute resolution community who has honored and inspired us through their passion and dedication to education in the field of dispute resolution. In addition, Susan was named to the Executive Committee of the newly formed Online Mediation Training Task Force, created to make recommendations regarding standards and practices in the field.
Susan regularly presents programs and workshops at family law and divorce industry conferences around the world and has contributed to more than 100 programs in just the past two years. Her recent and upcoming keynote engagements include the 2021 Association of Professional Family Mediators (APFM) Annual Conference, the 2022 National Academy of Distinguished Neutrals (NADN) Advanced Mediation Training Retreat, the 2022 New Jersey Association of Professional Mediators (NJAPM) Annual Conference and the 2023 Center for International Legal Studies (CILS) Annual Retreat in Salzburg, Austria.
Susan has been featured in and on media outlets such as CNBC, Market Watch, Forbes, Eye on Chicago, WGN, KROQ, the ABA’s Just Resolutions Magazine, New York Lawyer Magazine, Thrive Global, The Independent, Medium, Authority Magazine and She Knows among others. Susan is the creator and host of the award-winning The Divorce & Beyond Podcast with Susan Guthrie, Esq. which is ranked as one of the top 1.5% of podcasts overall in the world. Her new podcast, directed at dispute resolution and legal entrepreneurs is called The Make Money Mediating Podcast and debuted in the iTunes Top New Business Podcasts Category. See her website and LinkedIn, the Mosten Guthrie Academy, and her podcasts.
Zena Zumeta: Pre-Mediation Meetings
Research shows the efficacy of initial separate meetings with each party, yet in the past most mediators have not conducted pre-mediation meetings. This issue is receiving more (well-deserved) attention, so this workshop will examine the research and outcomes of pre-mediation separate meetings, and examine the do’s and don’ts to make them efficient and effective. Included is a video of pre-mediation meetings in a divorce mediation simulation.
Zena Zumeta’s Bio: Internationally known as both a mediator and trainer of mediators, Zena is president of the Mediation Training & Consultation Institute, Zena Zumeta Mediation Services, and The Collaborative Workplace in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
She received her Juris Doctor from the University of Michigan Law School. Ms. Zumeta is a former board member and president of the Academy of Family Mediators (now merged into the Association for Conflict Resolution), past president of the Michigan Council for Family and Divorce Mediation, and past Regional Vice President of the Society of Professionals in Dispute Resolution. She is a past member of the Editorial Board of the American Bar Association’s Dispute Resolution Magazine.
Ms. Zumeta has extensive experience as a trainer, mediator, facilitator and consultant. She has been providing mediation services since 1981. She is an approved civil and family mediator in Michigan, and an approved mediation trainer for Michigan and many other states. She has taught at Hamline University School of Law, and is an adjunct professor at Pepperdine University School of Law’s Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution, University of Detroit Mercy Law School and Thomas M. Cooley School of Law.
Ms. Zumeta is the recipient of the Family Mediation Council-Michigan Lifetime Achievement in Mediation Award; the National Education Association/Saturn Corporation Award for Union-Management Collaboration; the John Haynes Distinguished Mediator Award from the Association for Conflict Resolution; and the Kumba Award from the National Conference on Minorities in ADR. See her LinkedIn and website.
Laurel Stevenson: When and Why Co-Mediation Matters-Ethical and Practical Considerations
Given the differing roles of lawyers and non-lawyers, either as neutrals or as advocates, Laurel’s presentation will provide practical tips for co-mediation, including ethical considerations in the context of the Model Standards of Conduct for Mediators and other standards and guidelines.
Laurel Stevenson ‘s Bio: Laurel is the Director of the Mediation and Assessment Program (MAP) for the United States District Court, Western District of Missouri, a position she has held since August of 2020. In addition to overseeing the program, including a pilot program for prisoner pro se cases, she serves as a mediator and facilitator in a variety of cases. She has mediated more than 300 cases via Zoom, and hundreds more in-person. Laurel has utilized attorney and non-attorney co-mediators and co-facilitators in numerous pre-litigation and post-litigation matters.
During law school, Laurel was a member of the Journal of Dispute Resolution and published an article on using ADR in hospital staff privilege disputes. She was a guest lecturer for a graduate course in health care risk management and a research assistant to Professor Phil Peters on the Nancy Cruzan case which went to the United States Supreme Court.
Prior to becoming the MAP Director, Laurel was a litigator for more than two decades and served as a mediator and arbitrator her last twelve years of private practice. She tried more than eighty jury trials to verdict, including wrongful death cases, commercial disputes, professional liability, employment, and products liability cases. She served as appellate counsel in numerous cases and argued before all intermediate appellate courts in Missouri and the Missouri Supreme Court.
Laurel is admitted to practice in Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri, and Wisconsin, all state and federal courts in Missouri, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, and the United States Supreme Court.
In 2023, Laurel served as a Fellow with the ABA’s Section of Dispute Resolution. She is currently the Co-Chair of the ABA’s Court ADR Committee. She has written extensively on several legal issues, including ADR. She has taught more than thirty CLE’s, including courses on diminished capacity, conflict resolution for medical and legal professionals, insurance, and ethics.
Outside of work, Laurel is a published author of children’s books under her pen name Alysen Bayles, a name honoring her late grandfather. Her books to date include Winston, Silly Sam from Galapagos Land, and Cambridge and Clyde. She is working on more children’s books, including one on conflict resolution, in addition to novels and a poetry book.
Laurel is in her fourth year on the Board of Directors for Nova Center of the Ozarks, an organization providing residential and non-residential services to individuals with developmental disabilities, including individuals on the spectrum. See her LinkedIn and her books.
David Larson: Developments in ODR
As technology advances, so does online dispute resolution (ODR). Professor David Allen Larson will discuss recent developments regarding ODR, including his experience working with the New York State Unified Court System to develop a small claims ODR platform. He will identify what ODR designers and developers can do to ensure accessibility for persons with disabilities. Finally, because he was the ABA House of Delegates representative who recently successfully moved the adoption of Resolution 500 urging the increased use of early dispute resolution (EDR), he will discuss that Resolution and explain how ODR can support the goal of Resolution 500.
David Larson’s Bio: David is a Professor of Law at the Mitchell Hamline School of Law, Senior Fellow at the Dispute Resolution Institute, and a member of the Health Law Institute. He is Past Chair of the American Bar Association (ABA) Section of Dispute Resolution and is a Section Representative to the ABA House of Delegates. His research interests include ensuring digital accessibility for persons with disabilities, and he is the System Designer who helped create an online dispute resolution (ODR) platform for the New York State Unified Court System. David is the John H. Faricy Jr. Chair for Empirical Studies, and a Lifetime Fellow of the American Bar Foundation. He has seventy legal publications and has made more than 240 professional presentations in sixteen different countries.
David worked at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Office of General Counsel, Appellate Division in Washington, D.C. and, on behalf of that Office, participated in drafting the Regulations and Interpretive Guidance for the Americans with Disabilities Act. He was founder and Editor-in-Chief of the “Journal of Alternative Dispute Resolution in Employment” (CCH Inc.), an arbitrator for the Omaha Tribe and other disputes, and a Hearing Examiner for the Nebraska Equal Opportunity Commission. David has been a tenured professor at four different universities and colleges and practiced with a litigation law firm. See his selected articles, his profile, and his LinkedIn.
Marilyn McKnight: Competency-based Credentialing for Professional Mediators
Ms. McKnight, President of The Professional Mediation Board of Standards will discuss the evolution of competency-based credentialing of professional mediators, which has its roots in the development of the Academy of Family Mediators in the 19980s. Ms. McKnight will share with you the rationale and the progress in arriving at the test design for the PMBS competency-based credentialing for professional mediators that is soon to be launched. She will discuss the difference between competency-based credentialing and certification as a standard for credentialing and compare it to academic designations and why this is so important for our profession as mediators.
Marilyn S. McKnight Bio: Marilyn is co-owner of Erickson Mediation Institute and has more than 40 years of diverse mediation experience. Marilyn is recognized as a pioneer and leading authority in the field of mediation. She is a 1987 recipient of the Bush Leadership Fellowship for the study of mediation and psychology. Since 1980, she has established a full-time family and civil mediation practice and training institute that has trained over three thousand people in the techniques of cooperative negotiation and mediation skills.
Marilyn and her partner, Stephen Erickson are credited with beginning many new applications of the mediation process in the state of Minnesota including divorce mediation in 1977 and one of the first sexual harassment cases in Minnesota in 1982. She conducted the first farm finance mediation in 1985 and pioneered the use of neutral lay panels and neutral experts as methods of settling complex cases in the mid-1980s. In the late 1980s, she concentrated on the certification of professional mediators and was also involved in mediating the Ontario-Minnesota “Walleye Wars.” Marilyn has served as a mediator in large multi-party employment and congregational disputes involving as many as 60 people at the table.
Marilyn first presented nationally on family mediation in the early 1980s and continues to present and has trained on the topic of mediation all over the United States, Canada, England, the Netherlands and Singapore. She has taught mediation, conflict resolution and ADR at the University of Idaho College of Law, the University of Minnesota School of Social Work, and numerous programs for therapists, court personnel, judges, lawyers and other professionals. She has taught at Augsburg University in the Master of Arts and Leadership program since 2010 and served as adjunct professor for 18 years at William Mitchell College of Law.
An editor and author, Marilyn has co-authored, six books and numerous articles and training manuals on mediation, including Family Mediation Casebook, Theory and Process, in 1988 and “Civil ADR Training in Mediation and Conflict Resolution Skills” published by Erickson Mediation Institute in 1994. In 1999 they wrote Mediating Divorce: A Step-By-Step Manual, and Mediating Divorce: A Client Workbook, Jossey Bass Publishers. The book, A Practitioner’s Guide to Mediation, was published by Wiley & Sons, in October 2001. Their most recent book, co-authored with Donald Saposnek and Stephen Erickson, is THE CHILD SUPPORT SOLUTION: Unhooking Custody from Support. It was published in 2019, by CSS Press.
Professional memberships include the Minnesota Bar Association’s Alternative Dispute Resolution Section and the Academy of Professional Family Mediators (APFM). She was awarded the Distinguished Mediator Award in 1996 by the Academy of Family Mediators and in 2007 was awarded a Certificate of Service from the MN State Bar Association in recognition of her distinguished service as a valued contributor for the development and growth of Alternative Dispute Resolution in Minnesota. She holds a B.A. from Augsburg College in Minneapolis and earned an M.A. in Human Development and Mediation from the University of St. Mary’s in Minneapolis.
Beginning in 1989, Marilyn served on numerous committees and task forces to credential family mediation as a separate, distinct profession. In 1991 she represented the Academy of Family Mediators on the Test Design Project of the National Institute of Dispute Resolution, investigating competency-based credentialing of family mediators. Since then, Marilyn worked within the Association for Conflict Resolution (ACR) with the hope of developing competency-based credentialing of professional mediators as president in 2008. When ACR floundered financially she and a group of family mediators decided to leave ACR and founded the Academy of Professional Mediators in 2012 to recognize the profession of family mediation and pursue competency-based credentialing for family mediators. In 2014 she and a small group of colleagues founded the Professional Mediation Board of Standards for the purpose of developing competency-based credentialing of mediators. See her LinkedIn and her Mediate.com articles.