How I Became a Mediator

By Richard Alper

If you read enough professional bios, you quickly discover that people often set off in one direction, attending college or trade school to pursue a career. Many times—and often to their great surprise—they end up somewhere entirely different. My story is one of that variety, and I want to share it to demonstrate how people come into this line of work.

Growing up, my dad talked to me about the rule of law and public policy, and those ideas appealed to me. And so while many parents dream of their children becoming a doctor, I did not want to learn about cells, tissues, and bones. So I attended Georgetown Law school and hoped to practice land use law, with the hope of joining a small suburban law firm and practicing zoning and planning law in Maryland.

Early on in my legal career, I was working on leases, real estate contracts, loan documents, and partnership agreements. There was a lot of drafting and negotiating and I was getting tired of being a legal document wrangler (you might know us as commercial real estate attorneys). As a member of the local bar, I got a call from the local circuit court that there were too many cases on the docket and the judges wanted some mediators to come up to the courthouse and settle the cases so they could reduce their case load.

I figured it would be a good change of pace from document work and be a good way to help out with the court, so I volunteered. I drove up to the courthouse and the clerk handed me five case files to hopefully settle by the end of the day.

These cases involved an interesting assortment of legal issues, including personal injury, breach of contract between two small businesses, and wrongful termination.

In each case, counsel was there to represent each party. I listened a lot, asked a few questions, and made some suggestions. To my surprise and delight, all four cases I worked on settled. Time ran out before I got to the fifth case; before I knew it, the courthouse was closing for the day.

The parties walked out pleased they were not going to trial and content (if not ecstatic) with their settlement deal, which is about the most you can hope for. Sometimes when you go to trial you get a clear victory, where the court vindicates your position with a clear principle. That is not the case in mediation. In a mediation where both (or all) parties are negotiating, you have to expect some degree of compromise and collaboration, which means you may not get everything you ask for.

I left the courthouse that day feeling like I was walking on cloud nine. Afterward, the mediation assignment clerk even called to thank me for my help. I was glad to support the court by reducing their caseload and listening to the parties while searching for a middle ground between them. Without the baggage of being an advocate in the case, I found I was able to listen with greater care and ask good questions centered not around “winning” the case, but on helping people feel heard and understood.

I knew I wanted to do more of this kind of work. My time as a legal document wrangler was coming to an end as I turned my eyes toward helping people who were stuck in conflict. After that first courtroom mediation experience, I took a series of training sessions to understand what I had been doing in those sessions. Those trainings set me on a trajectory I couldn’t have predicted when I sat down in my first class in law school.