Date January 10, 2022

Time 12 PM PST • 3 PM EST • 9 PM CET

Cost $47

All webinars are free for CUC Connect members. Click here to learn more.

When we think of maintaining neutrality, many people believe that the goal is to be “objective” – to avoid taking on, or even seeming to take on, the experiences, feelings and beliefs of either party. But in fact, getting close to the parties is crucial to supporting them in reaching a solution that works for both. In this webinar, Gary Freidman and Katherine Miller will explore how “positive neutrality” – letting go of the idea of objectivity and instead working to connect with both parties, including on an emotional level – allows us to serve them better.

Participants in this webinar will take away:

• Techniques to engage with parties using positive neutrality
• An understanding of the pros and cons of positive neutrality versus traditional “objective” neutrality
• Dealing with judgment when it comes up and blocks connection

Faculty

Gary J. Friedman has been practicing law as a mediator with Mediation Law Offices in Mill Valley, California since 1976, integrating mediative principles into the practice of law and the resolution of legal disputes. Co-founder of the Center for Understanding in Conflict (formerly the Center for Mediation in Law), he has been teaching mediation since 1980. Prior to his work as a mediator, he practiced law as a trial lawyer with Friedman and Friedman in Bridgeport, Connecticut. After several years as an advocate, he sought a new approach to resolving disputes through increasing the participation of the parties in the resolution of their differences. At that time, he and his colleague, Jack Himmelstein, began to develop the Understanding-based model that is now practiced extensively in the United States and Europe. As one of the first lawyer mediators and a primary force in the current mediation movement, he has used this model to complete over one thousand mediations in the last two decades He has mediated numerous two-party and multi-party disputes in the commercial and non-profit realms, in the area of intellectual property, real estate, corporate, personnel, partnership formations and dissolutions, and family law.

Katherine Eisold Miller is an attorney practicing mediation and collaborative practice in Westchester County, NY. She has been practicing family law since 1987, first as a litigator and now exclusively outside the court system. She has taught family law at the White Institute and NYU as well as with the Center and lectures regularly on mediation and collaborative practice. She is a Board member of the New York Association of Collaborative Professionals.