Empathy, boundaries can go a long way with difficult clients
- Condominium Group
- Dec 30, 2007
- 1 min read
Empathy, boundaries can go a long way with difficult clients
December 31, 2007
Toronto civil litigator Deborah Howden writes that not all mediators are created equal and shares the seven traits of highly effective mediators in a recent issue of Lawyers Weekly.
“Like many lawyers, I have been to mediations where settlement was a longshot and where agreement between litigants was only achieved through the sheer skill and effort of the mediator,” she writes. “On the flip side, I have also participated in mediations which had a solid opportunity for settlement, but which nonetheless failed because the mediator was simply not up to the task.”
She writes in the legal publication that a good mediator is one who can “quickly identify the parties’ interests, narrow the contentious issues and bring the parties to a mutual agreement in circumstances where no such common ground existed theretofore,” Howden, partner with Shibley Righton LLP, writes in the legal publication.
