AboutTimmy Chou Expertise I am a experienced Mediator and a partner in a management consulting firm. As a mediator I work as a third-party neutral and specialize in partnership/shareholder disputes, management/labor issues, company culture difficulties, and family-owned business problems. I can help describe why alternative dispute resolution may be a good choice for you. As an experienced management consultant I may be able to offer creative ideas to help resolve your organizational and business problems and disputes. "If you say conflict, I say opportunity".
Question Hi,
What would you think are advantages and disadvantages in this career?
Thankyou!
Answer Thank you for your question.
Mediators are trained in specialized facilitation skills and work to bring disputing parties together to work out solutions. They specifically do not advocate any position or try to persuade parties to do one thing or another, but they typically will work to identify the core issues underlying disputes and use specific techniques to try to help the parties craft creative solutions.
The ADR profession is still really in its infancy and very little professional structure exists for practitioners in many states. Virtually anyone may provide services as a mediator. However, licensure is offered in many states.
Nearly every state requires some training in order to be licensed. Interestingly, few states will forbid you to offer services if you are not state licensed. For example, a sample of the Virginia licensure code is available here:
My experience is that effective mediators have taken advantage of some specific training because the role of a neutral facilitator is quite different. Lawyers are trained to take a position and advocate for it, and many have to retool their natural professional approach and behave in
some counter-intuitive ways. Being a neutral is alot harder than it seems!
Quite a range of training is offered from Master's degrees to specific certificate training (such as dispute resolution in health care settings, for example).
Seminars on ADR are likely offered through your law school or through local court systems in your location. Be sure to check out the ABA site.
The truth is that it is very difficult to "start out" as a mediator or arbitrator. Virtually anyone who gets into the field permanently as a career has come from some other field and is able to rely on related expertise. Typically professors, attorneys, people with state department
experience, therapists, and consultants have the credibility and financial resources to make a career viable, but almost all of us begin mediation work relying on income from our primary expertise.
Some career paths are emerging in some states through local government and court systems. These jobs are typically around court-ordered mediation for divorces, smaller business disputes, and often around victim-offender
mediation. They are usually staff level jobs that do not pay tremendous salaries. Some states and private foundations sponsor and fund quasi-governmental mediation "centers" in a non-profit model. These are few and far between.
If you are committed to this career path, I would encourage you to spend alot of time up-front in as many training venues as possible. Numerous groups sponsor seminars and certificate programs in everything from health care to military mediation. You can also volunteer with local groups and learn mediation. This would be a great experience for you and help you decide how interested you are in the field.
Good mediators have a wide variety of training and backgrounds, but classes in psychology, counseling, sociology and philosophy are all very good background. Many universities now have specific classes in dispute resolution, negotiation, peace studies or diplomacy. Having specific training in the law is not really a requirement to effective mediation, but many lawyers get sick of suing people and get into mediation because it is more personally satisfying. To be good, people have to trust you and you have to be good at reading people. You need effective people skills and to have developed a calming and reassuring demeanor and style.
The advantages to a career in mediation is that it is highly satifying work, it is always different and engaging. There is no "routine" work in this field and it is always interesting.
The disadvantages are that it is very difficult to maintain enough business doing mediation work alone to make a living - unless you are employed with a court system or with a governmental agency. It is not a service you can "market" to others. You just have to wait until the phone rings and someone needs help. I may get a dozen calls in a month, for example, and I am able to actually mediate perhaps 4 of those on average. Sometimes the issues are not suitable, or a party is not willing to mediate.
Those of us in the field are encouraged by the trend for more court systems emphasis on early mediation.
