By Jim Cooley

Jim Cooley here. Vice chairs, like vice presidents, don’t have much productive to do, so I thought I would give you a quick report on the Council’s December 1, 2021, meeting, and the upcoming events in March and May 2022.

Mark your calendar for the section’s CLE on March 18 featuring Ken Feinberg (not to be missed) (kudos to Steve Dunn, John Ong, Colleen Byers and especially Deb Dilman for the planning). Details will be coming soon from the NCBA. As of now [Omicron must be obeyed], the Council plans to meet live as well as via Zoom at the Bar Center at 3 p.m. on March 17. If you are in the area, join Council members at 5:30 for a social hour at nearby Okja K-Pub & Restaurant in Cary. You can then attend the CLE the next day. Please note the in-person policy when you receive the invitations.

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By Tara Kozlowski

The North Carolina Dispute Resolution Commission would like to share with the members of the NCBA Dispute Resolution Section amendments the Supreme Court of North Carolina made to the MSC Rules, FFS Rules, Clerk Rules, DRC Rules, and Standards of Professional Conduct. These amendments became effective on Oct. 1, 2021.

The MSC and Clerk Rules were amended to allow a designee to sign a finalized agreement on behalf of a party to the mediation. The party is responsible for providing written proof that the designee has written authority to sign any agreement made on behalf of the party. (MSC Rules 4(c)(4), Rule 10(c)(6) and Rule 10(c)(9)(b), Rule 15(c) and Clerk Rule 4(b)(1).)

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By Matt Van Sickle

The NCBA Dispute Resolution Section will host a 6-hour CLE on March 11 and 12. The title of the program is “Who Are You? Pleased to Meet Me – What You Know About Yourself and Others, Consciously or Unconsciously,” and will include discussions of the psychology of dispute resolution, unconscious bias, and technology in mediation and arbitration. The 6 hours of credit include 1 credit each for ethics/professional responsibility, substance abuse/mental health, technology training, and continuing mediator education. The Section Council extends its thanks to the planners of this event: Deborah L. Dilman, Steve Dunn, John W. Ong, and Danae C. Woodward.

Also, the Dispute Resolution Section Council recognizes that the current economic situation may be placing financial strain on its members. Therefore, the Council has approved four scholarships to cover the costs of this CLE program. The deadline to complete the application, which can be found at this link, is March 8, 2021.

By Ketan P. Soni

If you do any type of Zoom meetings with multiple people on a regular basis, go do an update right now. Why? There is a new feature that allows you to move the video tiles in whatever configuration you want.

This doesn’t seem groundbreaking, but it is. To improve your Zoom meetings, you can now move the video tile of the person you’re speaking to right below your video camera. If you do this, it will appear as if you are talking directly to the person, instead of looking “to the side.”

I’ve done countless Zoom meetings since March, and one of the major irritants is if someone is looking “down,” or “to the left,” or “to the right” in a meeting. The other person isn’t doing that on purpose, but they are talking to a video tile in an inconvenient place!

Try this and report back on how it goes. Zoom away, folks!

By Ketan Soni 

If you really want to skip everything I’m going to say below and get to the trailer, click here! The password is “mediation.”

Think back to the days that you had to connect with another mediator to get your observations done to become certified as a Superior Court Mediator by the DRC. For attorney mediators, there were two observations. For non-attorney mediators, there were five observations. If you don’t recall how difficult that was, I have the distinct memory of sending no less than 15 emails over the course of 18 months to every single mediator in the Charlotte region, to no avail. Finally, thanks to Judge Richard Boner and the esteemed Ray Owens, I became Superior Court Certified 1.5 years after I had actually taken the class.

Through the ongoing efforts of the NCBA Dispute Resolution Section over the past few years and in the spirit of compromise and working together with the Dispute Resolution Commission, a number of Section members volunteered their time and effort to create a video that qualifies as an Observation for Superior Court purposes! See link above for the trailer.

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