Family Mediation: What Makes a Good Family Mediator?

What makes a good family mediator? We asked our team of leading family mediators this very question, and this is what they had to say: 

• An ability to bring peace into the room.
• Being non judgmental with an ability to hear different narratives without the need to judge.
• Having a wide knowledge base of family law, tax, pensions, house prices, mortgages as well as child development, family dynamics, working with conflict, familiarisation with research connected with divorce/parental separation and its effect on children.
• Having an understanding of how family mediation sits within the non court dispute resolution options available to separating couples and familiarisation with court based processes.
• Having an ability to be impartial/neutral whilst holding to professional principles. For example, this enables the good family mediator to promote the welfare of children, encouraging integrity and principled pragmatism.
• Having an ability to engage individuals so they feel heard and respected whilst maintaining management of the process and offering a safe place to have difficult conversations.
• Having an ability to think of solutions without making light of the burden often being carried by the participants in a way that allows them to leave the mediation meeting with a greater level of hope than that which they arrived with.

A good family mediator possesses excellent attention to both the factual detail of your case, so they stay on top of facts and figures, and the emotional detail, so they help you overcome any relational blockers to clear the way to a solution.

A good family mediator:

• Is calm and wise.
• They take the couple seriously, listening and caring.
• They are all over the numbers and are creative about what the couple need to get them through.
• They are imaginative and succinct about how to distill what the couple need to focus on.
• They involves the couple’s children in a good way; and
• They manage safety above all.

Legal 500 UK ranks Family Law in Partnership’s talented team of family mediators as top tier commenting: ‘Great collection of talented individuals who offer a comprehensive service for both money and children. Their reputation for mediation in central London is stellar’.