Now that budget cuts have  ended court-annexed mediation—just as they led to its birth nearly twenty years ago—what now? What does the landscape look like from here on?

In some respects we’ve returned to 1994. Courtrooms have been closed, court staff laid off. All personal injury cases county-wide will be assigned to just two judges. Access to the courts for motions and other conferences is limited. Cases won’t come to trial for many years.

There’s at least one new wrinkle: Trials may not be heard in the courthouse where the case was filed. This adds another level of risk to the decision to proceed: Will the jury pool tend to favor the plaintiff or be one that is likely to side with the defense?  Unlike the past, no one will know until virtually the last minute.

Here’s another difference between now and twenty years ago: We now have a large, vibrant, experienced, and well-trained ADR community. Numbering well over 1,000 individuals, many are attorneys, including retired judges. Non-lawyer mediators often have specialized expertise in real estate, entertainment, business, medicine, or construction, to just name a few. The Southern California Mediation Association (SCMA) is a leading membership organization, enriched by its close ties to Pepperdine’s Strauss Institute for Dispute Resolution, generally regarded as the best ADR training program in the country.

Also unlike two decades ago, the legal community understands the mediation process and recognizes its value to their clients. And now the legal community needs mediators more than ever.

So what does this all mean?

Several groups have stepped up to fill the void left by the demise of the court ADR panels. The newly-created Mediator Registry offers listings of experienced neutrals, some of whom have agreed to accept cases at a reduced rate.  SCMA will soon launch a Select-A-Mediator Directory, making detailed information about its members available to the community. Others, I am confident, will follow suit to provide ways for lawyers and others to find the right mediator for their situation.

As for the mediators ourselves, I would divide the available work into three distinct types:

First are what I’ll call the Caviar cases. These present complex legal issues, with sophisticated parties and counsel, extensive discovery, and lots of money at stake. Such cases will continue to be mediated (and/or arbitrated) by organizations like Judicate West and ADR Services, whose neutrals are retired judges and highly-experienced litigators. Where prestige matters, and where parties are willing and able to spend many hours and many thousands of dollars on mediation, these are the places to go.

At the other end of the spectrum are the Community cases. These include issues like small claims and civil harassment, where emotions often are high, dollars relatively low, and interpersonal issues often paramount. Neutrals experienced in these types of cases remain available at little or no cost through such organizations as the Center for Civic Mediation (LACBA) and the Los Angeles City Attorney.

The third, and by far largest, piece are the Core cases—the vast middle. These were the cases that typically were assigned through the court panels. This is where there remains a huge need, with no “automatic” mechanism to fill it. Mediators (myself included) operating in the core now need to find the work; it no longer will come to us.

We need to demonstrate to the legal community—accustomed to getting our services for free—that the value we provide is well worth the cost. We need to do more marketing, more networking, more educating about what mediation is and what it can do. We need our professional organizations to promote mediation and mediators to the legal and business communities, as well as the public. And we mediators need to support each other, sharing resources and referrals.

There’s yet another piece of the conflict resolution world, one that is vastly larger than the other three put together, yet is rarely discussed. If we imagine all disputes put into a funnel (thank you, Lee Jay Berman), litigated cases are in the narrow “neck” at the bottom; they are but a small portion of the world’s conflicts. Yet many mediators have limited their efforts to that small space.

I was puzzled during my mediation training at what appeared to be the assumption that our careers would consist entirely of litigated cases. While working in labor relations and before being formally trained in mediation, I often used mediation techniques to resolve workplace disputes. We also brought in outside mediators on occasion. So it’s been clear to me that there are opportunities for mediators in many other contexts. Pre-litigation mediation, as well as mediation of issues that are unlikely to lead to litigation, has all the benefits of speediness, cost-effectiveness, maintaining relationships, and self-determination that the mediation community promotes.

The work is out there for those of us who take the initiative to find it—and to demonstrate to a new audience the power of alternative conflict resolution, just as the pioneers did for the legal community nearly twenty years ago.