Prof. Leonard L. Riskin of the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Law has written extensively about mediators and the mediation field.  His work in the mid-1990s focused on developing ways to characterize the many different styles of mediators. Recently, he has returned to that subject.  See “Decisionmaking in Mediation: The New Old Grid and the New New Grid System,” 79 Notre Dame Law Review 1 (December 2003).

In 1994, Riskin explained in Alternatives the ideas used to develop this article’s Mediator Classification Index. See Riskin, “Mediator Orientations, Strategies and Techniques,” 12 Alternatives 111 (September 1994).  Riskin elaborated on his classification system in “Understanding Mediator Orientations, Strategies and Techniques: A Grid for the Perplexed,” 1 Harvard Negotiation L. Rev. 7 (1996).  His theory on mediator style focused on (1) how mediators view their role, as “evaluative” or as “facilitative,” and (2) how mediators define the problem, “narrow” or “broad.”  The result in its original form was a four-quadrant grid keyed to these two style focuses and containing areas pertaining to mediator styles:  Evaluative Narrow, Evaluative Broad, Facilitative Narrow, and Facilitative Broad.