Thirty years ago I received a call from an attorney friend and former fellow law clerk asking me to travel to Ketchikan, Alaska to mediate an employment dispute. At the time I had practiced business law and litigation in Seattle for about 8 years and had been responsible for a number of large, complex cases. Mediation was in its infancy and until this phone call I had given no thought to it. This was just as well since at the time there was almost no mediation training available in the U.S.
Naturally, I asked my friend, why me? He replied that he thought that the parties would trust me and that I had the personality to effectively mediate the controversy. He also mentioned that the dispute involved several non=native executives of an Alaska Native Village Corporation who wanted to be paid a $1-million-dollar bonus for having negotiated the sale of millions of dollars in operating losses to a profitable Fortune 500 company. Such sales were made possible by federal legislation specifically designed to assist Native Village Corporations that were historically operating at a loss.
As I left Seattle for Ketchikan, I learned that the tribe had designated their own mediator, an Alaskan university professor who had previously become a trusted advisor. The two of us met at the Ketchikan airport and my co-mediator was alarmed to learn that, like him, I had no prior mediation experience. We nevertheless proceeded to tribal headquarters determined to do our very best.
About 18 hours later the parties were close to settlement. The claimant executives had no legal basis for their claim to a bonus and merely believed that their million- dollar request was simply “fair.” Tribal attorneys pointed out, however, that the sale of operating losses was entirely enabled by Congress and that the executives had little to do with that legislation. Importantly, the tribe’s directors, primarily tribal elders, reminded all that tribal culture for generations lauded the distribution of wealth from those who had it to tribal members who were less fortunate. This profound statement of tribal philosophy was pivotal to persuading two of the claimant executives to rethink the propriety of their demand for a large bonus from an organization that had struggled economically for years.
The parties resolved their dispute early the next day. My co-mediator and I believed that we were very fortunate to have been involved in such a transformational experience. He and I lost eventually touch, but I began to actively pursue mediation training and eventually became a full time ADR practitioner and have since performed thousands of mediations and arbitrations of every description. However, without the unexpected phone call from my law school friend, I can’t imagine that I would have ever found my way to this exciting and rewarding career.
The Phone Call That
Created a Mediation Career
by Gregg Bertram, CEO Pacific ADR Consulting LLC