Founding The Mediation Project
A Year in Review: Santa Clara County Bar Association
Mediation and The Pro Bono Project of Santa Clara County
By John Hedges, Director, Pro Bono Project of Santa Clara County, 1995
During times when being an attorney can be unpopular and might prompt shark similarity jokes or provoke anger from public that views attorneys as potential inhibitors to justice, Santa Clara County can take pride in the contributions made by local attorneys. In 1995, over 350 volunteer attorneys took more than 1,500 cases this year at the Pro Bono Project of Santa Clara County (PBP). Volunteer attorneys also staff the office, advise during open clinics, and offer training and peer mentoring. Volunteer paralegals and law students assisted with staff functions, coordinated clinics, provided intake with clients, did research, wrote and prepared administrative hearings, prepared family law papers and bankruptcies, and recruited and coordinated other volunteers. This community spirit and dedication needs to be recognized and acknowledged by the community it serves.
The PBP has experienced a great increase in cases through the years has sought alternative means of addressing the needs of a growing client population. Family law cases have increased over 30% year to year since 1990 and although we have a large number of volunteers, we cannot continue to handle the volume. One alternative method was to establish the Mediation Project in 1990, created by volunteer attorney Dr. Irene Smith. At this point she is the only trained mediator handling cases at PBP.
Dr. Smith is a practicing attorney with a masters in marriage, family, and child counseling as well as a PhD in counseling psychology. She works at IBM and has extensive experience with negotiations and interpersonal communications. Dr. Smith has negotiated contracts over $40 million and will be doing further corporate negotiation trainings this year. We hope to be able to offer mediation training from the Pro Bono Project in 1996 to support our volunteers.
The Mediation Project handles: civil disputes including landlord/tenant, dissolution, child custody, estate, guardianship, and negotiation consultation. Most mediations involve service issues as well as emotional ones and some of the most difficult cases involve minors and families. Mediations become more complicated legally and psychologically when minors are involved. We have had several cases where minors have been incarcerated and the minor has a baby. In one case handled by Dr. Smith, a minor had a baby during incarceration, the maternal grandparents had temporary guardianship and once the minor mother started probation, she wanted her child back under her direct care. All sets of grandparents were concerned for the safety of the baby since the minor mother did not have a job and had not finished high school. The minor father also voiced an interest in how the baby should be managed. This led to an emotional multi-party dispute over how the baby would be cared for by a mother who is a minor, with a history of incarceration.
Other cases involving minors including truancy and runaway issues. Once the minors come to the mediation table they are treated as adults with the expectation they will follow through with their agreements and commitments. The imbalance of power can often be an issue for minors negotiating with their parents and mediators must decide if the minor is empowered to make their own decisions. Experience has shown that if the minor is not empowered and they agreed to a mediation settlement, then the agreement does not last long, and the child may decide to run away or leave school again. The benefit of mediation is that the minor can help create the terms that they would consider important in staying at home or going to school and in part of being the decision making process, they are more likely to fully participate in the terms of the agreement.
Although family cases are a large part of the PBP mediation project, there are numerous other cases involving landlord tenant disputes, small business disputes, estate distribution, and many negotiation consultations.
The Mediation Project embarked on a new project with several other organizations to provide mediation training and services to local schools. Last year, Legal Advocates for Children and Youth (LACY) was inundated with requests from students to help them get back into school after being expelled based on a zero tolerance policy. The fear was that these students now had no place to go and in the scheme of things could likely end up in gangs and three-strikes you’re out program, costing our community more than necessary. At the time LACY and PBP, led by Dr. Smith, were working together to bring negotiation skills to teachers, train students in peer-to-peer mediation so that children could solve their own problems before turning to violence, and for mediation groups to mediate a child out of school for a certain period of time and then mediate the child back into the school. Since that time PBP has joined with the Office of Human Relations and PAIRS to bring mediation to teachers, faculty, administration, and children.
The Pro Bono Project was formed in 1986 to provide high-quality legal representation through volunteers to the indigent of Santa Clara County. The breath of services offered by the PBP is extensive. The PVP takes cases in all areas of civil law including family, tort, defense, immigration and political asylum, housing, employment, consumer law, and Mediation. The Pro Bono Project programs include homeless advocacy project, general assistance project, family law project, mediation project, paternity clinic, general advice clinic, political asylum project, bankruptcy clinic and disaster effort project.
Most of our cases are referred to us through other organizations such as Legal Aid or United Way organizations which are unable to assist the clients. The clients must meet minimum income standards to qualify for legal assistance and the clients are generally referred to one of our clinics to assess the case. We look forward to another successful year at the Pro Bono Project. I’d like to thank all our supportive volunteers! If you would like more information on the Pro Bono Project please contact me at this number. If you would like more information on the Mediation Project, please contact me or Dr. Irene Smith at this number or at her email address.
By John Hedges, Director of the ProBono Project ,1995
