Brigitte Bell Mediation - Taking into account clients' specific needs and goals.

Overview of Our Practice and Philosophy

Our Flexible Mediation Practice
is designed to respect each client's privacy, self-determination, and dignity

The mediation practice at Brigitte Bell Mediation is flexible both in terms of areas covered and in protocols, taking clients' specific needs and goals into account as we set up mediation session(s) for their particular problems or issues. To give clients some choice about location, we have mediation offices in both Chicago (the downtown Loop area in the historic Monadnock Building) and in Evanston, the latter with a view of Lake Michigan that calms the most apprehensive soul.

I have over twenty years experience mediating and helping people finds solutions to their differences and difficulties. I also train, teach lawyers and nonlawyers about mediation, conduct an advanced internship, present workshops on many aspects of mediation, including financial, parenting, and practice issues. I have also consulted about the mediation/law interface with mediators encountering difficulties to help them improve their own practices.

In the legal end of the practice, we also have shifted our focus primarily to Collaborative Law, which also emphasizes each client's right to make their own choices about process and outcomes. (For more about the Collaborative process see the website for the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals at www.collaborativepractice.com, of which we are members, and the website for the Collaborative Law Institute of Illinois at www.collablawil.org, of which I am a founding President, Fellow, and board member.)

Because of the many years of experience both as a family law litigator and mediator, I can and do mediate complex cases, including those with significant and complicated financial holdings. Despite the naysayers (who like "discovery"), there are ways to ensure that the information on the table at a mediation is sufficiently complete and accurate to allow people to make good decisions about their futures and fair allocations of their resources and to allow their advisers to have sufficient information about the assets or comfort with the process being used that they can provide advice.

One category of cases I handle that needs special attention is the case that has been in litigation for years, where the clients feel like they're on a never-ending treadmill and want to get off but cannot. Even if a trial date has already been set, and even if there has been lots of animosity and difficulty, if the clients and their representatives are willing to try to sit down and work it out at the eleventh hour, it can be done. At this juncture even more than early on a good mediator is a critical participant because the parties are too angry and the attorneys are too involved in the litigation really to step back and view the situation from the angles that will lead to productive solutions.

Our goal and our "style" is to be helpful and understanding whatever the problems and situation that require professional attention. We will work with you and your team (therapist, lawyer, coach, financial planner, accountant, tax adviser) to help you get through this difficult time.

Material presented on the Brigitte Bell Mediation, Ltd/Brigitte Schmidt Bell, P.C. website is intended for information purposes only. It is not intended as professional advice and should not be construed as such.

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