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Contact Mitch Genser

My mediation practice focuses exclusively on a wide variety of business realms - thus, the name of my practice - BizMediate. This clarity comes from years of work as a small business attorney, a mediator, a school teacher, a director of an educational non-profit, a consultant in the financial industry, and a historic real estate developer, amongst other things. I am somewhat unusual in this field of mediation in that I have actually worked in the trenches as a businessperson in many of the business realms in which I now mediate and I bring that experience and background to the mediation process.

I extensively studied dispute resolution in the Cornell Labor Relations School when in college and continued the work during law school as I practiced in the field of mediation and arbitration. Later, as a school teacher, my 'dispute resolution' skills were constantly put to the test in an alternative primary school in San Francisco, which carried over to my work as the state wide Executive Director of Educators for Social Responsibility, where our entire focus was to help introduce conflict resolution programs into the schools all over the state of CA.

Subsequently, I practiced as a small business and real estate attorney, regularly dealing with dispute resolution, then, worked as a children's lawyer in various juvenile based venues in Sonoma County, CA where conflict was of course the order of the day, and as a children's attorney, it was expected that I would diffuse and manage the conflict and set the stage for resolution. I served as a Smalls Claims Judge Pro Tem for a number of years, on a regular basis and then, morphed exclusively into a full time mediator in which most of my private and court appointed cases were business related. I then ventured out into the financial services world as a consultant and subsequently, as a real estate developer of historic buildings, and those business areas required the constant application of dispute resolution skills on my part. Now, I draw together all this experience in dispute resolution in my BizMediate practice.

BS in Industrial and Labor Relations - Cornell University (1977)
JD - Northeastern Law School (Boston) 1980
Single and Multiple Teaching Credentials (California) 1982

My mediation style and approach to dispute resolution has evolved over the years, and is now much less mediator driven. Though previously, I was more of a 'facilitative' mediator, I now consider myself a 'transformative' mediator, which is further along the spectrum of mediation styles that places a tremendous emphasis on helping parties transform conflict, by enhancing the parties' OWN decision-making and perspective taking efforts. As a transformative mediator, I assist the parties to have the conversation they wish to have with one another, and through appropriate interventions as a mediator, help the parties change the quality of their conflict from negative and destructive to positive and constructive, while exploring possibilities for resolution. I don't nudge, steer, or direct the parties to take positions that I may think might be best for them, or try to expedite or massage the mediation process so that an 'agreement' is reached. That is not how I envision my role as a mediator. I am not a chameleon and therefore will not change my orientation towards the mediation process merely to 'bang out' a settlement that may or may not last. If you are looking for that, I am not your 'guy'. But if you want to ensure that you have a mediation environment in which you will really be heard, and your decision making prowess fully honored, then by all means contact me at Bizmediate.

$300 / hr for business mediaition related work.
$250 / hr for mediations with a non profit party involved in the dispute

For the foreseeable future, all of my business mediation sessions will be conducted online via Zoom. I have been holding online meetings for literally decades and am extremely comfortable with this environment and feel confident that the parties to my mediation sessions will feel very well served in this online venue. However, although the bulk of my mediation practice is, and will continue to be Zoom based for the foreseeable future, I am amenable to doing face-to-face in person mediations given the right set of circumstances and the orientation of safety and health Covid protocols of the participants.