Foreword

• Jurisdiction: United States

Foreword

One of my favorite TV shows was The Masked Magician with the subtitle Breaking the Magician's Code. In that short-lived series the traitor would break the unwritten rule of magicians by disclosing how their most confounding tricks were accomplished: sawing a lady in half, escaping from handcuffs, strait jackets, descending "pit and pendulum"-type contraptions, etc. While I'm sure this series gained its star performer no accolades among his peers, it certainly made for mesmerizing television.

In this book, Vince Fornias accomplishes much of the same type of goal—while hopefully avoiding the unfavorable "fallout" from his followers. In other words, we get the inside scoop on not only how to participate in a mediation, but how a seasoned mediator, like the maestro in front of a symphony, accomplishes a result that, probably, neither of the mediation participants really knew they wanted when the mediation started.

I note that there is a program currently online touting what is termed "drop-in" mediations. This is a forum that consists of little more than a chat room—that supposedly allows mediations to come to fruition merely by each party typing in their positions and response to the others without the "middleman." It is unknown whether this program could be...