General Credit Hours:1
CDs/DVDs may not ship until 4-6 weeks after the original program date below.
Original Program Date: December 8, 2025
CLE Credit Expiration Date: June 30, 2027
This is a 60-minute course on ethical rules governing mediation and advanced mediation strategies and techniques applicable to litigators, mediators, in-house counsel and other mediation stakeholders.
Speakers include a panel of trial lawyers and mediators who will discuss a film called: “The Voice of the Mediation Client.” The film will be presented to the audience during the CLE. The film, created by the Florida Bar’s Alternative Dispute Resolution Section, is a compilation of interviews taken of actual parties who recently participated in mediations to reveal how the mediation process impacted their lives both positively and negatively. Long standing beliefs of trial lawyers and mediators about how to best conduct mediations will be challenged and intense and honest feedback about how clients are treated during mediation will impact the way trial lawyers and mediators mediate. The following are some of the questions which mediation participants will be asked during the film:
Should in-person or virtual Mediation be the preferred venue for dispute resolution?
How did the Opening Statement of the opposing counsel make you feel?
How did you feel when the mediator spoke to you directly during caucuses?
Did you feel prepared by your lawyer during your mediation?
How would you have wanted to be prepared differently? How much pressure should a mediator use to encourage settlement?
Should the mediator have meetings during the mediation with only the lawyers or did this make you feel excluded and not part of the process?
What did the mediator do that you liked and didn’t like?
What did the opposing counsel do that you liked and didn’t like?
How would you improve the mediation process?
To the ADR Section’s knowledge, no one in Florida has ever collected this information directly from mediation parties. This film is a historic effort to provide a voice to mediation parties to improve the mediation process. Most importantly, the film will engage trial lawyers and mediators from Pensacola to Key West regarding how to partner together better to mediate cases more effectively. Each registrant, attending online, will receive a link to the Third Edition of the Florida Mediation Best Practices Handbook as the course materials. The Handbook contains strategies and techniques contributed by over 800 litigators and mediators, state and federal mediation forms, ethics rules governing mediation and several other resources to enhance the trial lawyer and mediator’s effectiveness during mediation. The Handbook is designed to offer trial lawyers, mediators and in-house counsel an ongoing platform to improve the mediation process for their mutual clients.
60 Minutes
The Voice of the Mediation Client: How to Effectively Speak to Decision Makers During Mediation
Harold Oehler
Course Number:9575
Credit Hours:
General Credit Hours:1
Professional Responsibility Credit Hours:1
Ethics Credit Hours:1