Gary Friedman - High Conflict and Pets: Mediation Is A Better Way Out on ”Why Do Pets Matter?” hosted by Debra Hamilton EP #183

Gary Friedman, one of my dearest mentors and co-director of The Center of Understanding in Conflict joins us for this episode of "Why Do Pets Matter?" We're talking about pets and how mediation can be exceptionally beneficial when people are in conflict over a pet, what it takes to have a successful experience with mediation, and how mediation can help people move from a right or wrong, high conflict situation to a conversation that leads them to a better resolution for their dispute while preserving their future relationship. About Gary J. Friedman Gary Friedman has been practicing law as a mediator with Mediation Law Offices in Mill Valley, California since 1976. 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, including 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. Through the Center for Mediation in Law, Gary has trained lawyers, law professors and judges in the Center’s method of mediation and a mediative approach to lawyering and collaborative practice. Since l989, he has been training lawyers, judges and psychotherapists in the United States, Europe, and Israel. He has taught courses in negotiation and mediation at Stanford University Law School and the New College of Law and has taught at Harvard Law School’s Program on Negotiation and at the World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva. Gary has written extensively about mediation and conflict resolution and is the author of A Guide to Divorce Mediation, (Workman Publishing, l993) and is the co-author, with Jack Himmelstein, of Challenging Conflict: Mediation Through Understanding (published by the American Bar Association and Harvard’s Program on Negotiation, 2008).   Connect With Gary: https://understandinginconflict.org/our-teachers/gary-friedman/ https://www.linkedin.com/pub/gary-friedman/6/453/14b   Books: High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out  by Amanda Ripley A Guide to Divorce Mediation: How to Reach a Fair, Legal Settlement at a Fraction of the Cost Challenging Conflict: Mediation Through Understanding