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ABI/St. John’s Bankruptcy Mediation Training Entering Its Fifth Year and Going Strong: A Conversation with Elayne Greenberg and Judy Weiker
ABI/St. John’s Bankruptcy Mediation Training will offer its fifth 40-hour training session this spring. In recognition of this grand achievement, we spoke with Elayne Greenberg, the program’s co-creator and facilitator. As a participant of the inaugural ABI/St. John’s mediation class of 2011, it was a pleasure to catch up with Elayne and learn how the program has grown since its inception.
Judy Weiker (Judy): What was the genesis for creating the ABI/St. John’s Forty-Hour Mediation Training Program focusing on bankruptcy practice?
Elayne Greenberg (Elayne): The ABI/St. John’s Bankruptcy Mediation Training is actually a collaboration among three leaders in the field of bankruptcy education and mediation training: ABI, St. John’s Center for Bankruptcy Studies and St. John’s Hugh L. Carey Center for Dispute Resolution. ABI is the nation’s leading provider of quality bankruptcy educational programs. St. John’s Center for Bankruptcy Studies offers the nation’s premier bankruptcy program featuring the only LL.M. in Bankruptcy. The Hugh L. Carey Center for Dispute Resolution, a leader in the field of dispute resolution, offers a wide range of dispute-resolution programs, training both students and practitioners about the values and skills of dispute resolution. Together, ABI and the St. John’s Bankruptcy program publish the American Bankruptcy Institute Law Review, which has a circulation of approximately 11,000. In 2009, ABI’s Executive Director, Sam Gerdano, approached Prof. G. Ray Warner, then Associate Dean of Bankruptcy Studies and Professor of Law at St. John’s Law School, about developing a bankruptcy mediation training for experienced bankruptcy mediation practitioners. Jerry Goldstein, an ABI member and a bankruptcy mediation enthusiast, had also been discussing the need for a specialized training. The need for well-trained mediators was growing. Yes, there were many mediation training programs available, but none of them addressed the specific concerns of bankruptcy mediations.
Sam and Ray invited me in my capacity as director of the Hugh L. Carey Center at St. John’s to join their successful collaboration and develop this bankruptcy mediation-training program. Over the next two years, I met with the ABI Judges Advisory Group, ABI Bankruptcy Community and ABI Bankruptcy Mediators focus groups to ensure that the training was responsive to bankruptcy's specialized needs. Specialized bankruptcy mediation simulations based on actual bankruptcy cases were created.
 Click here to view a full list of the St. John's Bankruptcy Mediation Training alumni.
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