[To keep our clients safe and supported during the COVID-19 crisis, we’re using Zoom to connect with new and ongoing clients, and find it an excellent platform for keeping mediations on track.]
Our practice focuses primarily on mediation for separation and divorce. We mediate parenting issues, financial issues, and all other issues needed to provide clients with a comprehensive divorce settlement. Co-mediation is available for all our clients. Our office is located in downtown Rockville, Maryland. We also mediate pre-nuptial agreements, post-divorce disputes, conflicts concerning estate planning, and family business disputes.
After graduating from Yale Law School in 1982, I served as judicial law clerk for U.S. District Court Judge William B. Bryant and then worked as a staff attorney at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. From 1985 to 1995 I worked as an attorney practicing family law. From 1990 to 1994 I also served as Adjunct Professor of Law at American University Washington College of Law, teaching juvenile law. In 1995 I received my Mediation Training Certification from the National Center for Mediation Education. The following year I gave up adversarial legal work altogether in order to open my private mediation practice, and since then I have worked on a full-time basis as a divorce mediator and mediation trainer.
I have been a full-time divorce mediator serving Maryland and DC since 1996. I am recognized as a Certified Mediator by the Maryland Council for Dispute Resolution (MCDR). In 2003 and 2004 I served as President of MCDR and in 2005-2008 and 2012-2014 as President of the Montgomery County Divorce Roundtable, an interdisciplinary professional organization. In 1996 I founded the divorce mediation program at Jewish Family Services (JFS) in Baltimore and served as the primary mediator there for a decade. I have been active as a mediation trainer both nationally and locally, teaching mediation courses and conflict resolution programs at the University of Maryland School of Social Work and other educational institutions.
I believe that human beings—all of us—are brilliant creatures, fully capable (if given the proper assistance) of using our great intelligence to work out creative resolutions to our disputes. I see mediation as a process that allows people to think clearly, hear each other’s perspectives, and together figure out workable solutions to problems. As a mediator, my job is to provide a safe setting for negotiations, facilitate communication, suggest options, provide useful information, make sure that clients address all important issues, and document client decisions. Now, after decades as a full-time mediator, I still retain the sense of excitement that I felt during my first mediation, as a high-conflict couple set aside literally years of court battles to resolve their parenting disputes.
J.D. Yale Law School 1982
B.A. Stanford University 1972
