Wednesday, March 29, 2023
6:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Via ZOOM
Guest Coach: Robert Besunder, B.A., LL.B., Q.Med.
It’s like watching a NASA launch. Everything is ready. You’ve been the consummate professional. You’ve got the “right stuff”, and everybody knows it.
Website? Check. The parties booked this date months ago with your online calendar.
Notice? Check. You’ve sent out the Zoom link, and your mediation agreement came back signed by everybody.
Briefs? Check. They were actually delivered more than 7 days in advance.
And then the countdown. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1. Blast-off!
Then you do what you know are best practices. You give your opening, do the introductions…you set the table.
And then…somebody. A lawyer. A party. A support person. Or even you? Somebody breaks one of the legs on that table, and it starts to wobble…and it is in danger of crashing. Houston, we have a problem!
Through group discussion and role play, guest coach Robert Besunder will help us find ways of salvaging the mission (the mediation), even when there is a catastrophic malfunction right at the start.
Our guest coach, Robert Besunder, (the “R” in JADE) knows all about difficult openings in mediation (not that he has ever experienced one himself, of course). He has seen it all (or at least a lot) in his over 32 years as a lawyer, practicing primarily insurance and personal injury litigation for most of that time, and for the past seven years as a sole practitioner at Besunder Law. He has been mediating for the past eight years as Besunder Dispute Resolution, receiving his Q.Med. designation in 2017. For the past 18 years, he has also been sitting as a Deputy Judge in the Small Claims Court in Central East region. And, in 2020, he founded Besunder Learning, which offers educational webinars and workshops for legal and dispute resolution professionals.