West Virginia State Bar trains WVU College of Law students to help lighten the load on county Magistrates.
January 29, 2011 – Morgantown, W. V. – The West Virginia State Bar, in cooperation with the WVU College of Law and the West Virginia University College of Law Alternative Dispute Resolution (“ADR”) Society provided mediation training for more than 40 law students on January 29th 2011. The training, hosted at the WVU College of Law, leveraged the skills of attorney volunteers Mike McDowell, Dan McDowell, and Ryan Simonton, members of the West Virginia State Bar’s ADR Committee Shannon Smith, Professor Tom Patrick, and Debra Scudiere, as well as Harrison County Magistrate Tammy Marple and Monongalia Magistrate Clerk Caroline Stoker to provide training and coaching for WVU law students at the all-day event.
Once trained, students receive a certificate from the State Bar and can mediate cases in the Magistrate Courts in Harrison, Marion, Monongalia, Preston, and Upshur counties. Mediation is a process where a neutral third party, the mediator, assists the parties to a dispute in negotiating a mutually beneficial agreement. If an agreement is reached, then the case need not be adjudicated.
In 2005, members of the West Virginia State Bar “realized that law students had a strong desire to give back to the community and gain practical, hands-on legal experience,” said Shannon Smith, outgoing chair of the Magistrate Court Mediation Subcommittee of the ADR Committee of the West Virginia State Bar. Since then, the students, along with local attorney mentors, mediate about 40 cases a month in local county Magistrate Courts. In all, the students have mediated more than 1,000 cases.
“Mediating cases helps lighten the docket in the counties in several ways” said Harrison County Magistrate Tammy Marple. “Clearly if a case settles, then there is one fewer case on the docket, but the mediation process often helps expedite the proceedings for those cases that don’t settle, because the parties have sat down and thought through the issues with a mediator beforehand.” The law students also benefit from mediation. Mediation fosters useful lawyering skills, noted Jaime Ritton, a first-year law student who attended the training.
Mediations take place in each of the five participating counties once a month. Students and local attorney volunteers travel to the counties and mediate cases in the late afternoon. Mediation is also a significant part of Circuit Court proceedings. In West Virginia Circuit Courts, mediation is required in most civil matters.
West Virginia State Bar’s ADR Committee focuses on building the base of attorneys in West Virginia who have skills in the area of mediation, arbitration, and negotiation. The mediation training available to law students helps to further the Committee’s goals, while also providing community service and skills training opportunities to the students.
The ADR Society is a student organization dedicated to promoting student interest in ADR at the West Virginia University College of Law. The Society helps students gain an understanding of and promote the use of ADR as an effective alternative to litigation. The Society provides students with the opportunity to hear from prominent ADR experts in the field and to organize and participate in local mediation trainings and competitions. Additionally, the group is instrumental in maintaining the Magistrate Court West Virginia
