Year: 2009
Type: article
Abstract: For almost three decades, Professor Roger Wolf has served as a pioneer and champion for the use of alternative dispute resolution.He is truly the grandfather of mediation in the State of Maryland and was advocating the benefits of ADR long before it entered the common legal vernacular.When he began, Roger had to convince the courts and experienced litigators why mediation was such a good idea.Today, they seek him out.Roger has personally trained more than 1,000 mediators in Maryland and in neighboring states, and instructed thousands more on the benefits of finding collaborative resolutions to conflict.It has been an honor and a privilege to count Roger as a colleague and friend for the last twenty-eight years.Professor Wolf graduated from Harvard College in 1962, and earned a law degree from George Washington University in 1967.He joined the University of Maryland School of Law faculty in 1982.In 1983, he became director of the Attorney General's clinic and, over the next nine years, taught courses including criminal defense clinics, lawyering process, civil procedure, and his highly regarded alternative dispute resolution survey course.When he initiated the law school's Mediation Clinic in 1992, it was one of the first of its kind and quickly became the model for mediation clinics throughout the country.Professor Wolf gradually expanded its role and significance over the years by hosting a variety of high level conferences and training Maryland leaders in the effective use of the collaborative process.In 2001, Roger founded the Center for Dispute Resolution at the University of Maryland School of Law ("C-DRUM") which has served as an invaluable resource for all the schools at the University of Maryland, Baltimore campus and courts and agencies statewide.Now, due in no small part to Roger's dogged persistence, most civil and family cases in Maryland are referred to mediation at some point before they go to trial.Court-approved mediators must have forty hours of training; family mediators must have eighty.In a state where mediation resources were once rare, Maryland is now the home to eighteen community mediation programs that provide free or low-cost mediation services at the neighborhood level.
Language: English
Subfield: Strategy and Management
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1481984999