Title: Resolving Attorney-Client Fee Disputes Using Mediation

Panel: Courtney Chicvak, Yvonne R. Marin, Federica Romanelli, Amy Pontillo, and Anthe Maria Bova

Overview: How can attorney-client fee disputes be mediated? In this session, attendees will learn about how mediation is being provided by Long Island Dispute Resolution Centers and the New York County Lawyers’ Association as an alternative way for parties in a dispute about legal service fees to resolve their differences and reach a collaborative agreement. Attendees will learn how the new Nassau County Part 137 Mediation Program was designed, the design of the New York County Lawyers’ Association, and why mediation suits this case type well.

1.0 CLE Credit Available (Areas of Professional Practice)

Title: The Ins and Outs of Nonprofit Board Service

Presenter: Barbara Paxton, Director of BoardStrong

Overview: Being on a nonprofit board is a position with intrinsic rewards that can also provide opportunities for personal and professional development, allowing you to develop new skills, broaden your network and become a leader in your community. However, becoming a board member is also serious business and carries with it a significant level of responsibility. It is very important that current board members be aware of the responsibilities and expectations associated with serving on a nonprofit board. In this session, we will cover the basics of board service – roles, responsibilities and how boards work, as well as how to orient and support new board members. 

Title: How To Get On A Court Based Roster 

Panel: Danielle Shalov, Rebecca Price, Bridget O'Connell, Adria Gulizia and Irini Bekhit

Overview: Daniella Shalov and Rebecca Price will be discussing the federal level court roster, delving into the distinctions across regions such as SDNY/EDNY and NDNY/WDNY.

Bridget O'Connell, representing the NYS Unified Court System, will provide insights into the UCS' court roster application process.

Adria Gulizia from the New York Center for Interpersonal Development and Irini Bekhit, ADR Coordinator - Richmond County, will shed light on their partnerships with new roster members possessing specific legal backgrounds. These individuals are co-mediating with NYCID mediators, who contribute their mediator expertise to the collaborative process.

Robyn Weinstein, Director of the Cardozo School of Law's Mediation Clinic, will elaborate on how law schools like Cardozo prepare individuals for inclusion in the roster, emphasizing the mediation skills and knowledge imparted during legal education.

1 CLE Credit Available (Skills)

Title: Following the Yellow Brick Roadmap: How to Develop a Housing Court Program

Presenters:  Samantha Adler, Onawa Gigliotti, and Nicholas Schmitt

Overview: Are you a mediator or part of a Community Dispute Resolution Center (CDRC) looking to expand your services into the critical area of housing disputes? Join us for an enlightening workshop where we will provide you with a comprehensive roadmap to develop a new housing program within your organization.

Title: Tools for Challenging Situations, Trauma, and Self-Care in Dispute Resolution

Presenter: Dan Berstein, Founder of MH Mediate

Overview: Diversity, equity, and inclusion principles can be hard to implement.  This workshop shares succinct, practical tools that will help you easily integrate trauma-informed and bias-resistant practices into your dispute resolution work.  We will review simple ways to appreciate trauma, practice in a flexible, trauma-informed manner, understand power dynamics, be sensitive to diverse experiences, use accessibility principles, have equitable e-mail practices, avoid microaggressions, prevent inappropriate questions, address challenging behaviors, respond to complaints, and practice self-care.  The AAA-ICDR Foundation has generously supported a project by the CUNY Dispute Resolution Center, collaborating with numerous pilot courts and diversity advisors to create these user-friendly resources designed to help all dispute resolvers have procedurally fair ways to be equitable with parties from diverse backgrounds.  All attendees will also gain access to these free tools so they can incorporate them into their work.

Title: Federal Appellate Mediation: Nuts & Bolts

Presenter: Dean W. M. Leslie, Circuit Mediator for the Civil Appeals Mediation Program (CAMP) 

Overview: Coming Soon!

Title: Mediation, Magic, and the Evolution of Democracy

Keynote Speaker: Kenneth Cloke, Founder and First President of Mediators Beyond Borders International 

Overview: 

Based on "The Magic in Mediation: Searching for Symmetries, Metaphors, and Scale-Free Practices"(To be published in December 2023)

Anyone who has mediated is likely to have experienced the magic of mediation, and would very much like to do so again.  But if asked where this magic came from, how it happened, what it consisted of, and how they might replicate it, most would be hard pressed to answer.   

To identify the sources of magic in mediation, we need to learn by metaphor from other disciplines and professions, and search for ways of translating successful small-scale techniques into scale-free methodologies that can be applied to mid- and large-scale conflicts.  We are actively creating wars, pandemics, and environmental conflicts that cannot be resolved or prevented except globally, collaboratively, and mediatively, using scaled-up, higher order dispute resolution skills.  

Magic on a political level requires the same scaled-up, higher order skills, which represent an evolutionary advance in the nature, language, and practice of politics, requiring an interest-based form of democracy. This is the future mission and calling of conflict resolvers around the world, and as these problems and conflicts have no borders, neither should our efforts to resolve them.  

Magic happens not only because of what we do, but who we are; in spite of everything the parties have said and done to each other, all their anguish and pain and trauma and loss, all their failed efforts and hopelessness. Why?  Because we know, in our minds and hearts that magic is possible, and are ready to step into their hatred and fear and darkness and uncertainty, to search for it there.   In mediation, we allow ourselves, for a moment, to become the magic they are seeking, merely because they do not yet understand that the magic is already inside and between them.   

Title: Financial Fluency: Understanding the Balance Sheet and Profit & Loss Reports

Presenter: Jonathan Murray, NYSDRA Board Treasurer

Overview: Unlock the power of financial knowledge in this essential workshop designed to demystify the world of balance sheets and profit & loss (P&L) reports. Whether you're a nonprofit leader, business owner, or just looking to enhance your financial literacy, this session is your key to understanding the financial health of your organization.

Title: Addressing Burnout & Improving Wellbeing

Presenter: Kimberly Perone, Wellbeing Coach, Consultant & Certified Workplace Mindfulness Facilitator at The Center for Clarity, Compassion, and Contentment 

Overview: Certified life coach, wellness consultant, mindfulness facilitator, author and podcaster Kim Perone examines the difference between stress and burnout and guides us to understand how to identify our current state and ways to improve our wellbeing while still accomplishing everything we need and want to do in life.

Kim is the founder of the Center for Clarity, Compassion & Contentment (Center4c.com) and a proponent of these qualities as we need them to ensure we are neither burnt out nor stressed out, but rather grounded, engaged, and thriving. The center is not a place you come to, but rather a place inside you to establish a sense of stability in work and life.

Key Takeaways: 

• Costs of stress: pre and post pandemic figures
• Signs and symptoms of burnout 
• Ways to prevent or recover from burnout
• Coaching tips to reduce stress

Title: Understanding Gender-Based Violence for Mediators

Presenter:  Amelia Allen 

Overview: Gender-Based Violence (GBV) is global epidemic effecting millions of Americans each day. Often GBV appears in cases brought to mediation. Although many cases of domestic violence will be screened out before reaching mediation, there are many that will slip through. This presentation will inform mediators of the prevalence of domestic and gender-based violence, how these cases may make their way into mediation, and what mediators can do to identify and address it.

Objectives:

1. Develop a greater understanding of the forms of Gender-Based Violence

2. Enhance skills in recognizing and responding to coercive and abusive behaviors in mediation

3. How to provide survivor-centered, trauma-informed, and culturally responsive services for successful mediation

Lawrence Cooke Peace Innovator Award Recipient: Brad Heckman, Artivist, Former and Founding CEO of The New York Peace Institute

Presenters: The Cooke Family

We will honor Brad Heckman with the Lawrence Cooke Peace Innovator Award, an award created to honor individuals and organizations that have provided innovative leadership in the field of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR). This award was named after The Honorable Chief Judge Lawrence H. Cooke, who was influential in promoting the field of alternative dispute resolution in the NYS Court system. 

Title: Through Different Lenses: Increasing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Different Facets of Dispute Resolution

Panel: Robyn Weinstein, Sharon G. Matthie, Esq., Joanne Saint Louis, and Jarling Ho

Overview: Panel members will discuss the latest efforts to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion in the field of dispute resolution from the vantage point of their respective positions which include overseeing community dispute resolution services, court-annexed ADR, private commercial dispute resolution, and academia. 

1.5 CLE Credits Available (Diversity, Equity, and Elimination of Bias) for experienced attorneys only.

Title: Conflict TV: Building Partnerships and Pathways in Dispute Resolution

 Presenters: Donna Ramlow and Juan Carlos Salcedo

Overview: Join us on a transformative journey as we dive deep into the world of conflict resolution with a new TV series entitled 'Conflict TV.' Premiering in late Fall 2023, this groundbreaking, bi-weekly series will consist of 26 episodes per year exploring various topics, community concerns, potential programs, and real-life testimonies from beneficiaries of dispute resolution services. Conflict TV aims to present insights from diverse perspectives within the alternative dispute resolution (ADR) field, including individual ADR practitioners and representatives from the statewide network of Community Dispute Resolution Centers (CDRCs) that provide services across all 62 counties of New York State. Discover how you can be a part of the power of building stronger, more harmonious communities through broadcast TV.

Title: Restorative Justice in the Courts

Panel: Kellsie Sayers, Hilary Packer, and Jenn Gil Vinueza

Overview: Restorative justice, a paradigm and set of practices inspired by indigenous traditions, is increasingly used to respond to harm. In this session, you will learn about the values that underpin this work, how they can be embedded into an alternative-to-incarceration model and hear from practitioners who facilitate conversations between responsible and harmed parties in a process that diverts cases from the criminal legal system.

1.5 CLE Credits Available (Areas of Professional Practice)

Title: The Self Determination Principle and The Transformative Approach to Conflict and Mediation

Keynote Speaker: Robert A. Baruch Bush, Co-Founder and Board Member at the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation

Facilitator: Dan Kos, Assistant Statewide ADR Coordinator at the NYS Office of Court Administration

Overview: In this illuminating session, we invite you to a thought-provoking conversation between two distinguished experts in the field of Alternative Dispute Resolution. Professor Robert A. Baruch Bush, renowned for his role as the Rains Distinguished Professor of Alternative Dispute Resolution at Hofstra University, will take center stage alongside Daniel Kos, the Assistant Statewide ADR Coordinator for the NYS Unified Court System. Together, they bring decades of combined experience in conflict resolution and mediation to the table.

Professor Bush, also a Co-Founder and Board Member of the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation, will guide us through the profound theme of conflict transformation. 

This engaging session promises a seamless blend of theoretical depth and practical wisdom. Professor Bush and Dan Kos will engage in a dynamic conversation, ensuring that the audience gains comprehensive insights into the transformative power of mediation. Participants can look forward to exploring innovative approaches, success stories, and the evolving landscape of conflict resolution in the context of mediation.