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A recent article in the Lawyers Journal published by the Allegheny County Bar Association, “Early Neutral Evaluation in the Western District of PA,”[1] addressed the early neutral evaluation (ENE) and mediation opportunities that are part of the mandatory ADR program in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. In that program, the parties may choose ENE, mediation or arbitration. An interesting statistic provided that in 2017, 18 percent of parties in eligible cases chose ENE and 80 percent chose mediation.

I find it surprising that sometimes people do not appreciate that mediation is an artform. There are some who hold the misguided view that mediation is simply another form of court-directed settlement conference. However, mediation is not a settlement conference. Rather, mediation is a specialized process designed to facilitate a resolution of the pending dispute between the parties by engaging those parties in the process so that they can come to a resolution that meets their individual needs.

We had a very productive business meeting at ABI’s Annual Spring Meeting, where we discussed a number of issues, including:

1. presenting local programs to educate lawyers and judges about mediation;
2. creating an ABI membership list of mediators;
3. assisting ABI/St. John’s University to create a one-day advanced program connected to a regional or national ABI program;
4. encouraging participation of consumer mediators; and
5. the new leadership for the two-year term commencing April 22, 2018, as follows:

Editor's Note: This article was originally published in the January 2018 edition of the Global Restructuring Review (GRR).

In December, 2016, the executive committee of ABI’s Board of Directors created the ABI Commission on Consumer Bankruptcy. The Commission is comprised of seventeen members charged with examining the consumer bankruptcy system and delivering a report in December 2018 with recommended improvements.

On June 12, 2017, the American Bar Association’s Section of Dispute Resolution published its “Report of the Task Force on Research on Mediator Techniques.” Notably, this report makes no reference to any research on bankruptcy mediation — not even a single study.

The following article consists of four parts:

The Mediation Committee looks forward to another productive year. Our ABI-published mediation book, Bankruptcy Mediation, is an excellent resource for mediators and representatives of parties in mediation. The book has an impressive list of authors and does a great job of covering the issues a reader would want to learn about. We hope you saw it at the Annual Spring Meeting and either bought the book from ABI or at least looked over its content.