Pacific Judicial Council hosts 3-day mediation training

The Pacific Judicial Council concluded its three-day mediation training at the Kensington Hotel Saipan last Friday, with judges, lawyers, and mediators from across the Pacific learning about effective mediation and settlement techniques that they can, and should, implement in their jobs.

According to Guam judge Arthur Barcinas, who is also part of the PJC education committee, this was the first Pacific Judicial Council mediation training held in the CNMI in years.

“For this training, we brought in members of the PJC as well as local attorneys and judges from Saipan to train on mediation and settlement techniques. This is so that we can help people resolve their problems outside [the legal system],” he said.

Training participants focused on a lot of practical work, specifically techniques and procedures.

“Our trainers came from the Ninth Circuit out of San Francisco. They are regular mediators and settlement judges from the Ninth Circuit,” he said.

Aside from Saipan, there were also participants from Palau, Federated States of Micronesia, Kosrae, and more.

Barcinas said it is important to practice mediation techniques now rather than later because as the world comes out of the COVID-19 pandemic, the court system anticipates a rise in cases that may require mediation instead of full blown court proceedings.

“The trend is there. Cases are increasing as we come out of COVID conditions. We want to prepare to meet that demand and a lot of times the traditional legal process is long and expensive. So those cases that have a high probability of settling, they get sent to the mediators to see if the parties can work out a resolution that is acceptable to them and they arrived to it through them, not just judges making the decisions for them,” he said.

“The beauty of mediation is there is no set standard. It’s all about being creative and working with the parties to allow them to come up with a resolution for themselves for their own problems as opposed to the courts, which are bound by the law and procedures set out by our individual jurisdictions. This is more flexible and creative,” the judge added.

Paliknoa Sigrah, Kosrae mediator program chair under the Kosrae tri-state court, said he attended the training so it could help with the mediation program in Kosrae

“I’m very fortunate to be able to come to this training so that I can learn more about the statutes of the mediation process [because] for us, the mediation program in Kosrae, which started about 10 years ago, really helps the judicial system,” he said.