One Year In: Reflections on Leading Dallas's ADR Community

It has been a little more than a year since I took over as Chair of the Dallas Bar Association's ADR Section. The "honeymoon phase" is behind me, which means it is a good time to take stock — of what has changed in dispute resolution, where mediators are struggling, and what I still want to get done before my term ends.

Here is my honest assessment.

Cross-Pollination Is Working — Slowly

When I came in, one of my goals was to move the ADR Section beyond its natural constituency. ADR practitioners already understand mediation. What I wanted was more cross-traffic with the employment section, the business litigation section, the construction lawyers — the attorneys who are sending cases to mediation, not just conducting it.

That takes time, and I will not pretend we have mastered it. But I do think the CLE programming has helped. This year, we have drawn strong attendance, and a lot of that comes down to one topic: artificial intelligence.

I have noticed through our programs and the programs of other ADR organizations, if there is a speaker on AI, and you get a packed room. There is a mix of people who have no idea what the technology does and want to understand it, and people who are already using it daily and want to make sure they are doing it right. That tension makes for a productive conversation.

Where AI Actually Helps — and Where It Does Not Replace You

The legal community's AI conversation has focused heavily on confidentiality, and rightly so. If you open a chat interface and start typing in confidential client facts, case details, and party names, you are creating real problems. That material could be used to train future models. It could be exposed in discovery. The ethical risks are not theoretical.

But here is what our CLE speakers have been telling the lawyers in our section: the confidentiality constraint does not mean you cannot use these tools. It means you have to use them correctly.

What that looks like in practice is fairly simple. You describe the type of dispute without naming anyone or providing any identifying details. To use a simplistic example, if I am preparing for a mediation involving a non-compete clause, I might prompt something like: "I am a mediator in an employment case. The plaintiff is a former employee who claims the non-compete is unenforceable as being overly broad in terms of geography and time frame. What are the toughest questions I should be asking the employee's side? What are the toughest questions for the employer? What are they each likely to say in response?"

There is nothing in that prompt that reveals a client or even an industry. It could describe hundreds of different cases pending anywhere in the country. And what comes back is genuinely useful — a sounding board that surfaces the questions I might not have thought to ask, the arguments I might be underweighting, and the pressure points on both sides.

That is the right use of AI in mediation: a preparation tool, a strategic mirror, a way to stress-test your thinking before you walk into the room. What it is not — and cannot be — is a replacement for the human judgment required to read a room, build trust with a frustrated party, or know when to push and when to go quiet.

The moment you need to manage emotion, read body language, or navigate the kind of impasse where one party has dug in on principle rather than money, you are in territory that no AI model handles well. That is still the mediator’s job.

The Single Biggest Hurdle in 2026: Nuclear Verdicts

If I had to name the one development that has most changed the mediation landscape in recent years, it is not AI. It is what the bar calls "nuclear verdicts."

Jury verdicts in Texas — and across many other states — have been climbing. Not just in personal injury cases, but also in complex business litigation. We are seeing eight-figure verdicts in cases where the pretrial settlement range was historically far less than that. And that shift has changed the psychology on both sides of the table in ways that make mediators' jobs significantly harder.

On the plaintiff's side, the calculus has changed. If you genuinely believe there is a high probability that a Dallas jury will award you $50 million, your willingness to accept $5-8 million in mediation drops considerably. The expectation of a massive verdict becomes its own form of leverage — and parties hold firm accordingly.

On the defense side, insurance companies and corporate boards are having conversations they were not having five years ago. Cases that would have been evaluated as six-figure exposures are now being modeled as eight-figure risks. That changes authority levels, it changes approval chains, and it changes what carriers are willing to put on the table in mediation.

The mediator's job in this environment is harder because both sides are anchored to a number that may never materialize. My approach is straightforward, even when it is uncomfortable: jury verdicts do not always hold up on appeal. When a defendant faces a catastrophic verdict, the board of directors is likely to appeal. That means the plaintiff gets nothing for years — and maybe ever. In the meantime, the defendant is living with adverse headlines, auditor questions, and shareholder revolts while it pursues an appeal.

A deal at mediation is certain. A verdict is not. And even a good verdict is not a check you can deposit tomorrow. I try to say that plainly and early.

Recent decisions out of Texas courts make this point concretely. In Werner Enterprises v. Blake, the Texas Supreme Court reversed a $100 million verdict, finding that the truck driver's conduct was not a proximate cause of the crash — even though the jury thought otherwise. In Alonzo and New Prime Inc. v. John, the Texas Supreme Court overturned a $12 million jury award after finding that plaintiff's counsel had made inflammatory, evidence-free accusations of racial and gender bias during closing arguments, tainting the verdict beyond repair. And a federal appeals court unanimously reversed an $8 million racial discrimination judgment against the City of Hutto, finding no evidence to support the jury's conclusion.

Three large verdicts. Three reversals. None of those plaintiffs collected what they were counting on. They had the thrill of a massive verdict and the accompanying media coverage, but it resulted in nothing. 

I am not arguing that defendants always win on appeal or that large verdicts are never sustained. Some are. But the appellate risks are real, the process takes years, and there are no guarantees. That context belongs in every mediation conversation where a party is holding out for a number a jury might deliver and an appellate court might uphold someday.

How This Work Has Changed My Litigation Practice

After more than a year leading the ADR Section, I can say honestly that the neutral work has made me a better litigator — not because I have adopted some softer posture, but because I have a much sharper set of tools for steering disputes toward resolution.

When I represent a client in a business dispute now, I am not just thinking about winning arguments. I am thinking about what the other side actually needs, what interest is driving its position, and what a realistic outcome looks like for both parties. Those are mediator questions. They are useful even when you are an advocate.

A few months ago, I had a dispute that never reached the courthouse. Before anyone filed anything, I was able to use some of those tools — not just with my own client, but in my conversations with the other side. Helping them understand our position, acknowledging their concerns, keeping the conversation moving toward resolution. The case settled before a suit was filed. That would not have happened if I had come in with a purely adversarial frame.

Because my business-development efforts have focused on ADR for the last four years, it has been rewarding to see mediations and arbitrations pick up considerably over the past year. Arbitrations, frankly, even more than mediations. Most of that comes through word of mouth — attorneys I have worked with refer new matters to me, or colleagues think of me when a case needs a neutral. My separate ADR website and LinkedIn have helped as well. They keep me visible to people who are actively looking for a mediator, which is exactly what they are supposed to do.

The Unfinished Project: Bringing the Section Together

The ADR Section has a structural challenge that other bar sections do not face: our members are scattered.

The employment section, the construction section, the business litigation section — almost all their members are in downtown or uptown law firms, 10 minutes from the Arts District Mansion where many sections hold CLE events. Those sections have better attendance for a happy hour at a downtown bar or a downtown CLE.

I learned quickly that our section does not work that way. A significant number of ADR practitioners are in small firms, solo practices, or working from home. Some are in Frisco. Some are in Plano. Some are in Preston Center or the Galleria. We are not clustered.

What that means in practice is that virtually every one of our CLEs runs over Zoom — and we get remarkable turnout. But when we have tried in-person events downtown, attendance drops to about one-fifth of what we see virtually. The convenience of Zoom makes high participation possible.

The problem is that Zoom is not great for the kind of networking that builds a professional community over time. You can run a terrific program and still leave without a single new relationship. The informal conversations before and after — the part where you find out someone is dealing with the same type of case you just handled, or where a referral relationship quietly begins — that does not happen over Zoom the same way.

What I would like to leave behind is a better answer to that problem. Not a mandate for in-person events that most of our members will not attend, but a game plan to connect with members outside our virtual format. Whether that means structured networking components, smaller breakout sessions, or some kind of recognition system that rewards consistent participation — I do not have the final answer yet. But bridging that gap between the scalability of virtual programming and the relationship-building of in-person events is the unfinished work I care most about.

If you are facing a complex business dispute and want to discuss whether mediation makes sense at this stage, contact me for a confidential consultation.