Since 2011, the American Bar Association (ABA) has celebrated “ABA Mediation Week.” The ABA events bolster efforts of many other national, state, and local organizations, including the Association for Conflict Resolution (ACR), which have traditionally celebrated conflict resolution during October. According to the ABA, Mediation Week celebrates strides made in institutionalizing mediation as one of several dispute resolution processes. For many years, Florida has led the field of alternative dispute resolution which has grown in acceptance, especially as litigation has become more costly and lengthy with electronic discovery. There is certainly wide recognition that the majority of cases are resolved outside of the traditional adversarial process. Litigants, their attorneys and the judges they appear before routinely embrace multiple paths to settling lawsuits out of court, including mediation. The theme for this year’s ABA Mediation Week was: Mediation: Successes, Challenges, Trends and the Next Generation: Looking to the past, present and future. I am pleased to have been featured in the Dispute Resolution Section's Just Resolutions eNews on the subject of ESI Mediation. You can read my article entitled, "Joint Sessions and the Use of E-Neutrals in ESI Disputes" here-- http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/uncategorized/dispute_resolution/just-resolutions/kolin_joint_sessions.authcheckdam.pdf
