Florida Mediator Robert A. "Bob" Cole recently participated in a panel discussion titled "Freshwater Fishing in the Ocean – Using ADR in Administrative Law" for the 2018 National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary Annual Conference.Bob, a shareholder with Upchurch Watson White & Max who has been part of its mediation panel since 2012, discussed this role for alternative dispute resolution with a Stetson University College of Law professor, a chief administrative law judge form Maryland and chief of staff for the Florida Department of Health.

This week, shareholder Judy Bass, who was part of UWWM's original South Florida team, and mediator Art Garcia, who joined UWWM in October 2016, hosted our table, greeted clients and prospective clients and collected business cards for a drawing at this year's Meet and Greet.

At the end of August, as many of us prepared for a long Labor Day weekend, UWWM Mediator Ricardo Cata delivered CLE seminars, first in downtown Miami for the Miami-Dade Florida Association for Women Lawyers (MDFAWL) and then in Coral Gables for the Cuban American Bar Association (CABA). Ricardo's  presentation, "The Roles of Trial Counsel and In-House Counsel in Mediation" drew upon his years of experience representing resort and tour operators based in Latin America and many other clients in Florida’s circuit and federal courts, plus careful research of his topic.

Nine other UWWM attorney mediators in Florida and Alabama also are named in the upcoming edition of Best Lawyers®.

While some announcements are still under embargo, here's what we can say so far.

"The meeting was attended by 65 class action lawyers from around the country, who met to discuss current trends in the law and how court ruling will affect the practice," said mediator Steven Jaffe, who spoke to the group on behalf of UWWM and explained the mediation firm's experience and expertise in mediating  class action cases.

As a silver-level sponsor of the event, Upchurch Watson White & Max underwrote the opening cocktail reception at the Boca Raton Resort & Club.

Howard R. Marsee, a mediator with Upchurch Watson White & Max since 2001, is set to speak at the 26th annual conference presented by the Florida Dispute Resolution Center in Orlando Aug. 9 to 11, 2018. More than 900 dispute resolution professionals may attend this year's conference at the JW Marriott Grande Lakes "to enhance their knowledge, sharpen their skills and network with colleagues from across the state." Seminars such as Howard's will provide Continuing Mediation Education (CME) credits required to maintain Florida Supreme Court certification as a mediator.

April Y. Walker, a respected Central Florida litigator, has become the newest member of Upchurch Watson White & Max Mediation Group's panel of neutrals. Ms. Walker has statewide ties as a native of Miami and a graduate of the University of Florida Levin College of Law in Gainesville. Additionally, she began her litigation career at Carlton, Fields, Ward, Emmanuel, Smith & Cutler (now Carlton Fields Jorden Burt) in Tampa in 1997. She left the practice to clerk for U.S. District Judge Stephan P. Mickle in the Northern District of Florida but returned to the firm's Orlando office in 2008. She was an associate litigation attorney until she was elected a shareholder in 2015.

In the Spring 2018 issue of The Professional, the newsletter of the Henry Latimer Center for Professionalism, mediator/arbitrator Lawrence Kolin describes some challenges to arbitration's status as "an efficient process with finality" and the ways that professionalism could remedy the perceived ills of the process.