by Judy Joyce

Created on: March 12, 2009

Divorce Mediation: Non-Attorney Mediators with Multiple Skills

Re-design of the Court System

Due to overcrowding in the court system calendar, states like California began to re-design the court system over a decade ago. Considering that criminal matters take precedence over civil matters, it became clear that civil cases were getting bumped from calendars in order to try criminal matters within the statutory time. Even as those inefficiencies were being worked out within the system itself, Family Law cases- which are a civil matter - were becoming more and more intertwined with criminal hearings involving assault as between spouses. ("Justice in the Balance 20\20" - The Future of the California Courts 1993)

Domestic Violence law proved helpful moving cases over into Family Law court as a matter of calendaring. In California, no-fault divorce statutes had removed the need for divorce court trials to be held in almost each and every instance clogging the system in decades before. However, spouses who could not settle their differences were\are still allowed to have a trial to determine issues unresolvable among their divorce lawyers or themselves. ("Re-Organized California Rules of Court" - Legislative History Handbook, Raymond Legislative Research).

Model Mediation Projects

Several projects were established by the Judicial Council which is the administrative arm of the California courts. Bar Associations worked with judges to develop case management vehicles to assist the citizens using the courts, the judges, lawyers and case administrators as a whole. One such trial project was ADR for the courts. For the uninitiated, ADR, is Alternative Dispute Resolution. ADR includes mediation models. One such model was developed by the Marin County Bar Association and ultimately adopted as a model for the State of California. At that time, ADR was an unlicenced and unregulated field used to resolve business disputes through arbitration and mediation. As a result, non-profit ADR organizations became active in the mediation process for the trial models and did a fine job. Non-lawyers were being used and lawyers were beginning to set criteria for lawyers to become active in ADR beyond business cases. (Marin County Bar Association, ADR Committee, Model Rules for ADR, 1992).

Multi-Option Justice

The term coined for the new models advanced for use in the courts was dubbed "Multi-Option Justice" and according to Prof. Frank E. A. Sander of Harvard Law School:
represents a vision for

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