By Salim Uqdah
It’s been an excellent year for the Dispute Resolution Section. We awarded our inaugural Harmony Award to Deb Dilman of Southpark Family Law in Charlotte and the Peace Award to J. Randolph Ward. Section Chair Jim Cooley implemented meaningful task forces to foster innovation in the field. Finally, the Race & Equity Committee has launched a new “Try Someone New” campaign to promote the use of talented, diverse mediators across the state.
By Salim Uqdah
We hope everyone’s 2023 is off to a great start! The Dispute Resolution Section asks all mediators, arbitrators, collaboratively trained practitioners/neutrals, paralegals, and attorneys to please complete this Pro Bono Survey.
The survey measures pro bono work in the field of dispute resolution (including but not limited to mediation, arbitration, and collaborative law cases). Your responses will help determine nominees for the NCBA Pro Bono Awards and the inaugural Harmony Award.
By Jim Cooley
We move forward.
The Council of the Dispute Resolution Section met on December 7, 2022, with 37 Council members, committee chairs and past section chairs in attendance. Up for discussion were seven possible task force topics and the results of a survey of Council members and other section leaders about those topics. The survey included questions about whether participants would actively participate in a task force and, if so, which of the topics would be their first or second choice. Here is a summary of the survey results:
By Frank Laney
In the early 1990s, I conducted mediations for divorcing couples and had a steady growing business. In most cases, one party or both had attorneys with whom they consulted, but those attorneys never came to the mediation meetings. So, I would draft a set of notes, recording the agreements the parties reached and one or the other would take it to an attorney to have it drafted into a binding separation agreement. Finally, I mediated with an elderly couple who had little money, and neither had an attorney. I prepared my notes and gave them to the couple and instructed them to have an attorney prepare their separation agreement. They had great difficulty finding an attorney who was willing to undertake that task, except one who would write it for $10,000, which they thought was outrageous. They came back to me to discuss what to do next. I remember the old man, haltingly pointing to the diploma on my wall. “You’re an attorney, aren’t you?”
By Salim Uqdah
Salim Uqdah, a Dispute Resolution Council Member and Co-Chair of the Dispute Resolution Pro Bono Committee, discusses his journey to certification for North Carolina Dispute Resolution Commission’s Superior Court, Family Financial, and Clerk Mediation programs.
There are two answers to that question. A quick summary is that sometimes, you have to be lost to find your true purpose.
In 2016-2017, I felt lost and conflicted. I no longer wanted to pursue law school, and my crisis of faith and identity felt overwhelming and nerve-racking. After six to seven months of research, I realized that mediation was a viable option for me; it also helped to have the ADR coordinator sitting one cubicle behind me. I took the MSC training in March and opened my company, Uroboros Mediations, in June 2018. I gained expertise in other areas, like divorce coaching, collaborative law neutral facilitation, arbitration in FINRA cases, and dispute system design.
By 
Sean Vitrano
Greetings and happy autumn from the Pro Bono Committee of the Dispute Resolution Section!
Our team has been busy organizing for another successful bar year, and we invite you to participate.
The Pro Bono Committee works to identify projects and programs that provide members of the Dispute Resolution Section meaningful opportunities to use their skills and training to serve the public; support the creation of new pro bono DR opportunities and programs; and encourage section members to engage in pro bono service.
By Judge J. Randolph (“Randy”) Ward
This year marks the 30th anniversary of mediation in North Carolina‘s Workers’ Compensation system, introduced by a pair of North Carolina Bar Association CLEs presented live on September 21, 1992, at the Raleigh’s Velvet Cloak Inn. “Mediation for Workers’ Compensation Counsel” was held in the morning, and “Worker’s Compensation for Mediators” followed after lunch. Video replays were shown through February in Raleigh, Jacksonville and Charlotte. (See brochure, infra.)
When I was appointed to the N.C. Industrial Commission in early 1989, the state and its workforce had outgrown the agency’s resources. North Carolina was at or near the top in attracting new businesses, with an attractive climate and workforce, strong educational assets, and entrepreneurial banks. Industrial employment grew to 29% of the workforce in the early nineties. When I arrived, the Commission had twelve Deputy Commissioner positions, but only nine were hearing cases. I was told that there was a twelve- to eighteen-month backlog of cases awaiting hearings. Although the three Commissioners heard appeals from the Deputy Commissioners’ hearing decisions, I was the only lawyer on the Commission. Read more
By Steve Dunn
Miscommunication and misunderstanding are two of the biggest obstacles in mediation. In most cases, there is plenty to disagree about even when the parties understand each other clearly. Mixed signals and misinterpretations make it hard to settle cases, but they are quite common. When the parties speak different languages, the risk of miscommunication only increases. Using a language interpreter can greatly enhance the prospect of a successful mediation. This post contains some tips about how to use a language interpreter to your best advantage in mediation. Read more
By Jim Cooley
The NCBA Dispute Resolution Section (DR Section) started as a committee of the NCBA which imagined a future, first, of court-ordered arbitration for small claims matters and, later, of court-ordered mediation of civil cases throughout the State’s Superior Court Division. Over time, the Committee successfully developed and implemented programs for the court-ordered mediation of most civil disputes in the Superior Courts and many family law disputes in the District Courts. But the world of dispute resolution is being transformed before our eyes, as Colin Rule reminded the participants in the 2021 Conflict Resolution Day program sponsored by DRC. Read more
By Frank Laney
Many mediators describe themselves as reformed litigators – lawyers who have spent decades in the litigation trenches, fighting court battles for their clients. Then, at some point in their career, they have an epiphany – they realize that there is a better way to get their clients to where the client wants to be – past this dispute. It is the rare client who comes to a lawyer asking for as much total war as the lawyer can muster within the rules of court procedure. Instead, what the client wants is a resolution to a conflict. They want their problem solved.