Make peace not war: Colorado's mediation business grows immoderately.

• Author: McCrerey, Linda
• Position: Includes related article on how to choose a mediator

Colorado's mediation business grows immoderately.

A typical month for Denver attorneys Lillian S. Lehrburger and Sally Ortner might include mediating a heated public meeting on affordable housing in a ski resort town, and an agreement between a special-needs child and his school district.

Then it's on to crafting a divorce settlement, averting a split between partners in a dry-cleaning business, and resolving a neighborhood dispute about a noisy car dealership.

Lehrburger and Ortner are among growing ranks of lawyers and other professionals in the mediation business - Lehrburger since 1995 and Ortner since 1983, making her an early proponent of what is also called "alternative dispute resolution," or ADR.

Partners in the mediation firm Lehrburger & Ortner LLP, they are in demand by clients ranging from school districts and government agencies to real estate agents and businesses - anyone who wants to resolve disagreements without litigation. They are "guideline" members, trained and approved for referral to consumers by the Colorado Council of Mediators and Mediation Organizations, the CCMO.

Attorneys are not the only professionals who have gotten into the act. Retired judges, social workers, pastors, communications professionals and psychotherapists are enjoying the benefits of a mediation career: decent incomes, control over their schedules and the satisfaction of being peacemakers. Beware: Not all are among the 350 "guideline" members of the Colorado Council of Mediators and Mediation Organizations.

Mediation is the voluntary use of a neutral third party to help define issues in terms 'of underlying interests and come up with solutions based on these interests. It became popular in the early 1980s in neighborhood disputes and family law. In the 1990s, it spread to real estate and employment issues, and to district courts to resolve case backlogs.

Relatively rare 20 years ago, mediation is a "very strong trend," said CCMO President Jackie Moorhead. In 1998, her employer, the year-old Denver Mediation Center, recorded 56 cases. As of Aug. 31, 1999, the center had recorded 125 cases. "If that's a boom or a trend., I don't know. As people find out about this, the trend will get stronger."

The trend is fueled by recent federal and state laws requiring mediation in many types of dispute resolution. For example, standard real estate con. tracts in Colorado require mediation prior to litigation, as do the Better Business Bureau, American...