Legal Officials, Litigants See Savings in Time and Money From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Feb. 2, 1997 © 2000 Journal Sentinel Inc., Reprinted with permission by: Betsy Thatcher of the Journal Sentinel staff "I'll see you in court!" is not likely to be replaced by "I'll see you in mediation!" but the new spin on that familiar phrase is not far from the truth. A year ago, Waukesha County Circuit Judge Patrick L. Snyder said he was ordering mediation in about 15% of the civil cases that came before him. Now that number is closer to 60%. "A few years ago, you wouldn't even recommend mediation to anybody. Nobody did it. It was just new," Snyder said. These days Snyder offers it in nearly every case he handles in civil court. About 1990, some judges began encouraging mediation but it wasn't until July 1994 that the Legislature gave Wisconsin judges the authority to order mediation, Snyder said. "Even then, I wasn't picking up on it in every case," he said. "Now I routinely ask in every case." Mediation is just one form of what is known as "alternative dispute resolution," a tool for the state's judges that contains a set of options for settling legal disputes before they get on the time-consuming and costly track toward trial. "That's a hot topic these days," said Milwaukee criminal defense attorney Stephen M. Glynn. Although mediation is not an option for criminal judges, a number of mediators are criminal and civil trial lawyers or retired trial judges, Glynn said. Often mediation involves "testing" a trial strategy on a mediator who can give an opinion to the parties on whether their strategies would work in a real trial, Glynn said. In addition to trial lawyers and retired judges, experts in various fields who do not have law degrees act as court-appointed mediators. Last year, a dispute between the Village of Lannon and its neighbor, the Town of Lisbon, over land access landed in Snyder's court. The dispute was related to Lannon's construction of a sanitary sewer system. Litigation would have been time-consuming and costly, because the multimillion-dollar project was being held up. So Snyder asked for mediation. Snyder called in Kurt Schrang, an Oconomowoc construction consultant who has been a contractor for 35 years and who has done mediation and arbitration work in the construction industry for 18 years. "He saved those two municipalities $100,000 apiece," Snyder said of Schrang, who helped the communities devise a solution. It's important to keep in mind that Schrang and other mediators like him are not practicing law when they are appointed by a judge, Schrang said. "The court gives you a certain set of instructions as to how far you can go and that everybody has to agree to," Schrang said. Alternative dispute resolution is sweeping through Wisconsin courts and in certain industries with such gusto that, in 1993, Marquette University established the Center for Dispute Resolution Education. In fall of 1995, it inaugurated a five-course graduate program in dispute resolution that was the first in the state. About one-third of its students are lawyers. Another third are psychologists and social workers who mainly do divorce mediation, said Eva M. Soeka, Associate Professor of Law and the Center's Director. "There's been a great deal of judicial education (on mediation) in the state since the 1994 law took effect," Soeka said. "My sense is that it's being accepted and even welcomed by judges," Soeka said.