Gary J. Friedman
Gary J. Friedman has been practicing law as a mediator with Mediation Law Offices in Mill Valley, California, since 1976, integrating meditative principles into the practice of law and the resolution of legal disputes. Through the non-profit organization which he co-founded, The Center for Understanding in Conflict (formerly The Center for Mediation in Law), he has been teaching mediation since 1980.
Prior to his work as a mediator, he practiced law as a trial lawyer with Friedman and Friedman in Bridgeport, Connecticut. After several years as an advocate, he sought a new approach to resolving disputes through increasing the participation of the parties in the resolution of their differences. At that time, he and his colleague, Jack Himmelstein, began to develop a model of mediation -- the Understanding Based Model -- that is now practiced extensively in the United States and Europe.
Through the Center for Mediation in Law, he has trained lawyers, law professors and judges in the Center’s method of mediation and a mediative approach to lawyering and collaborative practice. Since l989, he has been training lawyers, judges and psychotherapists in the United States, Europe, and Israel. He has taught courses in negotiation and mediation at Stanford University Law School and the New College of Law and has lectured frequently at numerous other law schools and teaches at Harvard Law School’s Program on Negotiation and at the World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva.
