Monthly NYC-DR Roundtable Breakfast

THE UNDERSTANDING-BASED MODEL OF MEDIATION

JACK HIMMELSTEIN AND KATHERINE MILLER

This presentation by Jack Himmelstein and Katherine Miller will focus on The Understanding Based approach to mediation and collaborative practice.  This model focuses on supporting disputing parties in moving through their conflict together.  In this approach, we always work together with all parties rather than the caucus approach where the mediator shuttles back and forth between the parties in the effort to forge a deal. We strive to help the parties understand and communicate about what underlies their conflict and use that understanding as the ground for moving toward resolution.  This approach has been highly successful, and enriching, for both parties and mediators in both the commercial and family contexts (as more fully described at (http://www.understandinginconflict.org ). 

The presentation will also include how the principles underlying the Understanding Based approach can be applied in Collaborative Practice.

[NOTE: Anyone wishing to learn more about the model can request the introduction from Challenging Conflict: Mediation Through Understanding  by Friedman and Himmelstein be forwarded to you by e-mail by contacting the Center at training.ny@understandinginconflict.org. ]
Jack is co-founder and co-director, with Gary Friedman, of the Center for Understanding in Conflict, formerly the Center for Mediation in Law (based in New York and California).  The Center is a national non-profit educational institute which trains lawyers and other professionals in mediation and other forms of alternative conflict resolution based on the Understanding-Based approach to conflict. He is co-author, also with Gary Friedman, of Challenging Conflict: Mediation Through Understanding, published by the American Bar Association in cooperation with the Harvard Program on Negotiation (a co-winner of the 2008 CPR International Institute for Conflict Resolution Outstanding Book Award). 

For the past 30 years, Jack has conducted trainings in this approach to resolving conflict (with Gary and others) throughout the United States, as well as in Europe and Israel — for lawyers, psychologists, teachers, judges, ombudsmen and other professionals who work with conflict (These trainings have been organized through the Center and other institutes and universities in this country and abroad including the American Bar Association, the Harvard Program on Negotiation, the New York City Bar Association, the New York State Office of Court Administration, the European Association of Judges for Mediation (Gemme) and many others). For the last several years, these trainings have also included bringing this approach into the teaching of collaborative practice, focusing on the work of lawyers, psychologists (coaches), child specialists, and financial professionals.

Previously, Jack  was a civil rights lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, taught at Columbia Law School and co-founded the CUNY School of Law.

Katherine is a Collaborative Lawyer and mediator with a practice located in Westchester County and New York City.  Katherine is President of the New York Association of Collaborative Professionals. She teaches mediation and Collaborative Practice with the Center for Understanding in Conflict (Center for Mediation in Law) and conducts frequent trainings on Collaborative Practice and mediation for lawyers, mental health professionals, financial professionals and others.  Katherine has also taught at New York University, the White Institute for Psychoanalysis and Brooklyn Law School.