Love Odih Kumuyi: All About ADR

Love Odih Kumuyi: All About ADR Love Odih Kumuyi trained as a mediator at the Mediation Center of Dutchess County and is currently volunteering for the New York State Unified Court Systems, where she has been since June of 2014.

Mediation, says Love Odih Kumuyi, is a form of Alternative Dispute Resolution, or ADR, that is facilitated by the State of New York and most other state court systems as an alternative to going to trial. There are several different forms of ADR, but the purpose is always the same: to bring opposing sides in a dispute to a peaceful and equitable resolution of their differences. ADR is seen as an extremely useful process that can save money for the State and for those involved in a dispute. Using Alternative Dispute Resolution services also speeds settlement of the issue at hand, and helps to relieve the strain on the nation's already over-burdened court systems.

As Love Odih Kumuyi knows, the New York State Unified Court System offers people who are engaged in a legal dispute access to free or reduced-fee ADR services. The services are made available in many of the state's courthouses, and in the Community Dispute Resolution Centers that are located in most of New York's sixty-two counties.

As a certified mediator, Love Odih Kumuyi acts as a neutral party who listens to opposing sides of a dispute and helps them try to come to terms. The objective is a mutually acceptable outcome. Mediators do not act as judges in deciding the dispute. Instead, their role is to make possible the communication necessary for the two sides to come to an agreement themselves. Love Odih Kumuyi has found that mediation is especially useful in disputes involving family members, neighbors, or business partners. Her experience has taught her that mediation is less useful in cases where one party has an advantage in power over the other party.

Arbitration is similar to mediation, says Love Odih Kumuyi. Like mediation, it is less formal than a trial, and the rules about what kind of evidence can be introduced are not as strict. A key difference is that before they enter arbitration, the opposing sides must agree to the arbitrator's decision as final. There usually is no avenue for appeal to the losing party.

Other forms of Alternative Dispute Resolution, says Love Odih Kumuyi, include Case Conferencing, in which a judge or a judge's representative tries to settle the dispute after meeting with both sides and their attorneys. Collaborative Family Law gives couples seeking a divorce a way to end their marriage out of court. In Neutral Evaluation, a neutral person with expertise in a subject hears both sides make their cases and renders an evaluation of likely court outcomes. Parenting Coordination seeks to help high conflict parents with parenting plans. And Summary Jury Trials, Love Odih Kumuyi says, is an adversarial approach in which each side makes its case in abbreviated form, and a jury makes a decision that is usually, although not exclusively, nonbinding.