Litigator-Turned-Mediator Sees The Value Of  Working Things Out

By Kaaren Valenta

For years dispute resolution was synonymous with litigation, courtrooms, judges, and juries. But during the past decade, businesses, families, neighbors, and individuals have increasingly turned to mediation to resolve disputes without court proceedings.

Ted Winokur spent much of the first decade of his career as an attorney, where he saw first-hand the ramifications of using litigation to solve disagreements. So when he returned to the law, after a six-year hiatus to help manage a large family owned business, he decided to use his skills to launch the Meeting House Mediation Group, LLC, in Newtown.

“A lot of attorneys mediate as part of what they do in their practice but it is a small part,” Mr Winokur said. “I decided I wanted to do it 100 percent of the time. It is such a great field because it is an art, not a science.”

The goal of mediation is to get both sides to communicate, he explained. “The recent strike by musicians on Broadway was settled by a mediator. They couldn’t resolve the issue themselves so they brought in a mediator and it was resolved in a 12-hour session.”

Mediation is beneficial to everyone involved because they maintain control of the negotiating process, he said.

“It’s not like arbitration. You make your own settlement decisions. You have to agree to the settlement,” he said.

Mr Winokur, 42, said he thinks he came by his talent as a mediator naturally by growing up as the middle child in his family. His first job after graduating from the Boston University School of Law in 1985 was with a law firm in Stamford, where he was an associate and a partner, practicing in the areas of estate planning, probate, and real estate.

About six years later he joined his grandfather, father, and brother to become part of the management team of a successful family business, where he was responsible for a variety of areas including human resources, contracts, financial operations, and information technology.

“My grandfather started the Culligan Water Company in Bethel in 1961 and decided to retire in the early 1990s,” Mr Winokur explained. “My family asked me to take over and work with my father and brother at the company. It was a very difficult decision to leave law practice and do it, but I did it. I had the opportunity to work side-by-side with my father for six years, and that was irreplaceable.”

In business, he discovered he was able to use his legal skills in a completely different way.

“We did custom-designed water treatment systems for large companies around the world so we sometimes needed to sit down and work out problems,” he explained. “There also were employee disputes and contract negotiations.”

When Mr Winokur’s father decided to retire, the family decided the time was right to sell the business.

“I decided to go back to private law,” Mr Winokur said. “I went back to doing wills, estate planning, and real estate but by now I knew I wanted to do mediation so I went on a crusade to get as much training as I could.”

Mr Winokur holds advanced mediation and negotiation certificates from the Harvard Law School Program of Instruction for Lawyers and has trained as a mediator at several dispute resolution centers in the Northeast, including the Woodbury College Dispute Resolution Center in Vermont.

 “Mediation is a process,” Mr Winokur said. “Skill is involved, and theory, and there is a structure to all of this. I’m able to put it together in a way to help people.”

Mediation can be used in many ways, not just the settling of disputes, he said. For example, it is useful for small business owners who are thinking about transferring ownership or management duties to a family member. Business partners who are debating an expansion or disagreeing about priorities can benefit from mediation, as can families who are engaged in estate planning or other significant decisions.

Employers dealing with difficult situations in the workplace and companies facing breach of contract claims also often turn to mediation. Neighbors who have complaints about noise or property matters can resolve the issues amicably through mediation.

“One of the times that mediation is the most useful is where there is an ongoing relationship between the parties involved,” Mr Winokur said. “They have an interest in resolving the issue in a way that doesn’t destroy that relationship.”

In disputes there usually is a lot of miscommunication and misunderstanding, he said, but mediation helps to this problem.

“Those involved have an opportunity to sit face-to-face with a third party and say what is on their mind. They can vent, get it off their chest, and then work on resolution,” Mr Winokur said.

Mediation is a private, confidential process that saves time and money, by avoiding litigation, and has a very high success rate, he said. “You reach a decision that both are happy with.”

“The joy for me is to work with parties that couldn’t even look at each other when they walk into the room and at the end they can shake hands. I know I’ve done my job,” he said. “If they had gone to court, the outcome probably would have been much different.”

Mr Winokur is an adjunct professor at the University of Connecticut School of Law Mediation Clinic, and at Quinnipiac University School of Law. He is also a mediator for nonprofit community organizations in Connecticut and New York. He is a member of the Connecticut Council for Divorce Mediation, the Association for Conflict Resolution, and the New York State Dispute Resolution Association, and is a member of the Executive Committee of the Alternative Dispute Resolution section of the Connecticut Bar Association.

Mr Winokur said he also is developing a program that would be used at companies for employee training on communication skills.

Meeting House Mediation Group has consulting professionals that include mediators, trainers, and business advisors. More information is available at the company’s website, www.meetinghousemediation.com or by calling Mr Winokur at 364-1956.