Pierrette Sévigny and Richard McConomy are partners in the Richard McConomy Conflicts Resolution Centre.
Sévigny and McConomy will be back at Concordia on March 23 to conduct the day-long seminar Advanced Civil and Commercial Mediation.
Presented through Concordia’s Centre for Continuing Education, this course is designed to further prepare established civil and commercial mediators — those with 40 hours of training and accreditation from either the Quebec Bar Association or l’Institut de mediation et d’arbitrage du Québec (IMAQ).
“Our targets are the civil and commercial mediators who are currently accredited and who would like to have a course in English. We’re authorized by the Bar Association to dispense these courses and to advise the Bar to accredit them,” McConomy says.
Participants will receive eight accredited hours towards their continuing legal education requirements from the Barreau du Québec. “Someone who takes this course will be able to identify themselves as a graduate of an advanced course in civil and commercial mediation, he says.”
A primary aim is to help mediators refine their skills and update them on Quebec’s new Code of Civil Procedure that came into effect at the beginning of 2016. This code, which spells out the rules and steps a person must follow in any Quebec legal proceeding, contains new information specific to mediation.
For instance, McConomy says, the new code “makes in its first seven articles a commitment to mediation, and that parties must explain to a judge why they have not agreed to go to mediation after considering it.”
The first part of the course will consist of lectures, with a focus on the updated code as it pertains to mediators. Later, participants will engage in role-playing exercises to illustrate the main concepts of the course.
“Mediation is a process whereby the parties meet with a mediator in total confidentiality and discuss the conflict they have,” McConomy says. “It begins with identifying the parties, then identifying the conflict — there are usually two sides to every story — and they give each other their story under the assistance of the mediator, who then helps them find some common ground.”
He adds that lawyers sometimes advise clients that their conflict would best be resolved through mediation rather than a long, expensive court case.
“Mediation will cost you about 15 per cent of what it would cost to go into a litigation all the way to the end,” McConomy says. “It’s a small investment for a big payoff — and you can do it without ever starting a court case.”
The instructors, who met as undergrads at Loyola in 1964 and married four years later, bring a wealth of experience to the classroom, both as teachers and legal experts.
Instructor biographies
Me Richard McConomy is recognized as a mediation pioneer, having helped to train about 1,000 mediators in North America and Europe. He’s been a lawyer since 1971, specializing in family law and general litigation, and is a past-president of the Family Law Committee of the Canadian Bar Association. He was Bâtonnier of the Bar of Montreal from 1996 to 1997.
The Hon. Pierrette Sévigny began practicing law in 1975, and is a retired Quebec Superior Court judge with 17 years’ experience on the bench. Aside from her work in family law and training mediators, she has been a delegate to the National Conference on the Status of Women, the National Conference on Women, and a key founding board member of Montreal Catholic Counseling Inc. She taught at the former Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal and LaSalle College, as well as Concordia.
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