The Self Represented Litigant: Challenges for mediators, lawyers and other dispute resolution professionals: How do we recognize and embrace change in our practices and our institutions

1. SRL Challenges for
mediators, lawyers and
other dispute resolution
professionals: How do we
recognise and embrace
change in our practices and
our institutions?
Julie Macfarlane and Bernie Mayer

2. The Challenge of
Change for Conflict
Professionals

3. What are Our Challenges in
Dealing with Criticism from
the Public? From our own
Colleagues?

4. How Should We raise
Critiques? And What is a
Responsible Way of Dealing
with Criticism?ct

5. A New Era of Professional
Criticism?
 Professionals are no longer “expert
gatekeepers”
 Declining deference towards professionals
 Google provides endless second opinions
 DR clients are “savvy shoppers”
 Increased professional competition and
economic insecurity

6. The SRL Phenomenon and
Criticism of Lawyersct

7. And they have consistent complaints
about legal services
Counsel “doing nothing” (“nothing happened”;
“nothing had been done”)
Counsel not interested in settling : “The two
lawyers were just saber rattling, seeing who
could piss the other off the most.”
Counsel not listening to the client/ not
explaining their decisions to the client
Perception that some legal tasks not “worth”
the hourly rate

8. “You are just lawyer-
bashing”
“You are betraying the
profession”
“This system has served
us well for 150 years and
we should trust it do go
on doing so.”

9. Beyond Neutrality
The Crisis in Conflict Resolution

10. The Critique (2004)
 The need outstrips the market
 We are supply driven
 We are marginal in the most intense conflicts
 We are caught in a narrow self-definition
 What we offer and what disputants want is often
severely out of sync
 We have reached a professional plateau

11. The Response
 From many: “Thank you for articulating what I was
experiencing”
 From others:
 “You have done irreparable harm to our field which the
rest of us will now have to compensate for.”
 “You are sensationalizing the problem”
 “This is way too depressing to show my students.”
 “Just look at all the wonderful work I am doing.”

12. Please think of something significant
you have changed about your practice
in the last few years
Why did you make this change/ what
were the pressures on you to
change?
What did you learn about yourself
and adjustment to change as a
result?

13. Please pick one of the
following statements
 More than half of those in family court are there without
lawyers
 What clients want most from conflict specialists is for
them to play an ally role and not a neutral one
 Clients are less willing to pay for a professional to “take
charge” of their case and very concerned with being
consulted at each step and understanding how their
fees are being used for services

14.  What is challenging about accepting this
statement?
 What does this mean for our roles and
identities as professionals?
 How if at all do these changes square
with the core values and principles of our
work – is there any tension?

15. The Conflict Paradox
 When we are in conflict we are likely to think in terms of
dualities and contradictions
 To deal with conflict productively, we have to move
beyond these polarities
 In other words, conflict pulls us to a more simplistic way
of viewing the world, to engage constructively we need
to develop a more sophisticated view
 The most profound difference we make is when we
successfully address this paradox