How years inside one of Texas’ busiest mediation ecosystems shaped my thinking about conflict, justice, and why preventing disputes is often more powerful than resolving them.
When people think about mediation, they usually picture two people sitting across a table trying to settle a dispute.
That certainly happens. I’ve spent years helping facilitate those conversations.
However, mediation is only one piece of a much larger system.
Over the past three years, volunteering with the Bexar County Dispute Resolution Center (BCDRC) gave me something I hadn’t expected: a front-row seat to how disputes move through an entire community. Not just mediation itself, but the pathways people follow before they ever reach a mediator, the structural constraints public institutions navigate, and the opportunities that exist long before a lawsuit is ever filed.
Combined with my work in San Francisco’s Conflict Intervention Service program and later public service experiences, those years fundamentally expanded how I think about dispute resolution—not simply as a collection of techniques, but as an interconnected system capable of producing dramatically different outcomes depending on where and when we intervene.
Ironically, some of the most valuable lessons I learned had very little to do with mediation itself.
They had everything to do with systems.
An Invitation Into the Community
My introduction to Bexar County’s mediation community actually began with a presentation.
In July 2023, Samantha Demory, the president of the Alamo Area Mediators Association (AAMA) called to invite me to present to their members, mostly made up of Bexar County Dispute Resolution Center volunteer mediators.
She complimented Mosaic’s website which had already become one of the highest-ranking dispute resolution resources in the San Antonio area. I was flattered — and honored to share my knowledge with such an established community.
The topic? One I had been preparing for some time, actually.
The Art of Crafting Questions
While the presentation explored questioning techniques (from Socratic dialogue and exploratory questioning to subtle linguistic framing) the larger objective wasn’t simply using language as a means of analyzing the structure of our thinking, then using that awareness to better communicate with clients, more capable of evoking the imagination of parties…
It was learning how thoughtful questions can transform conflict itself.
Questions (can) slow conversations down.
They (can) interrupt assumptions.
They (can) create psychological safety.
Therefore, sometimes they reveal solutions that neither party realized already existed (when used skillfully, at the right moment, with the right framing, matching the leap of imagination required with the one parties are ready to explore).
Looking back, it’s fitting that my first contribution to Bexar County’s mediation community centered on questions. Over the next several years, I would begin asking a much larger one.
Watching Conflict Move Through an Entire System
Most professionals only see the lifecycle of their dispute. Not the disputes of others. And almost always only doing so from a limited vantage point.
- … A landlord experiences unpaid rent.
- … A tenant experiences a notice to vacate.
- … An attorney sees litigation.
- … A judge sees a docket.
- … A mediator often sees a scheduled case.
Volunteering at the DRC offered something different.
As a result, it allowed me to watch disputes move through the entire ecosystem. And watch them from many vantage points. Through the eyes of many participants.
Whether the dispute involved a business contract, neighbors, landlord-tenant issues, divorce, custody, or consumer complaints, the overall pattern was remarkably consistent.
Conflict emerged.
↓
Communication deteriorated.
↓
Positions hardened.
↓
Sometimes attorneys became involved.
↓
Demand letters were exchanged.
↓
A lawsuit was filed.
…Months passed.
Eventually… The parties finally sat down together in mediation.
And very often… They settled.
Here’s the realization that stopped me in my tracks: It wasn’t surprising that mediation worked. It was surprising how late it happened.
Seeing the System Behind the Cases
As I continued volunteering, another education quietly unfolded.
It wasn’t just through the mediations themselves, but through countless conversations with BCDRC leadership, volunteer mediators, and court professionals. This is where I unpacked and reflected on all the cases, all the lifecycles, all the perspectives… all with colleagues who all had their own memory of cases and reflections.
Consequently, we had many discussions…
- The types of cases entering the system
- The disputes that rarely reached mediation.
- The practical constraints on scheduling.
- The reasons some parties accepted mediation and others declined.
- The role funding played in shaping services.
- The realities of volunteer availability.
- The relationship between court dockets and mediation demand.
Over time, individual cases gave way to recognizable patterns. Whether this was a product of my ombuds training in advocating for fair process and systems, or just enough exposure to mediation case data and thoughtful colleagues, I’ll leave for another time.
Many tenants actively wanted mediation, but their landlords refused. Only after litigation started did they show up (and often, it was outsourced).
Business disputes frequently centered less on legal complexity than communication failures, and unmet expectations (both very understandable, somewhat inevitable hiccups). Then sunk costs from time wasted raises the stakes and draws them into litigation like a strong undertow.
Community disputes revealed how surprisingly small misunderstandings could grow into years-long neighborhood conflicts. Institutional complaints are lagging indicators.
Perhaps most importantly, I began appreciating the immense logistical challenge of operating a public mediation program. It’s a massive achievement in increasing access to justice.
And, it’s constrained primarily by two factors: capacity and discoordinated demand.
Capacity limits means limited staff, volunteer availability, scheduling, funding, mandatory waiting periods from court processes, and more.
And by discoordinated demand for mediation, I mean unequal demand by parties, the same demand at different times, or mixed ideas about what mediation really is which confuses demand.
Like every public institution, the DRC must balance tremendous community need against finite resources. And that challenge is made harder when demand is all over the place to begin with.
Understanding those realities gave me an even deeper appreciation for the DRC’s work.
It also revealed why even highly successful mediation programs cannot, by themselves, solve every conflict challenge facing a growing community, despite the tremendous value and logic of engaging every dispute early (as endorsed by the ABA since 2024).
Why Housing Kept Standing Out
One pattern continued to capture my attention: Housing.
Landlord-tenant disputes represented a substantial share of mediation requests, alongside business disputes. Yet many housing conflicts followed a frustrating trajectory.
By the time mediation occurred, losses had compounded, until the only option left was rolling the dice in litigation to try to recoup the costs, and hope for sufficient damages to make it all worthwhile.
Legal expenses accumulate. Relationships deteriorate. Stress amplifies. Options narrow. And everything hangs in the balance of a win-lose system.
People often wait months for trials in just lower level courts. Higher courts? Forget it. Now that’s the system capacity showing.
At the same time, I kept seeing another reality: discoordinated demand.
Thousands of tenants contacted mediation programs seeking help before or during conflict. Many never ultimately participated in mediation; they could’ve, but why didn’t they?
Sometimes landlords declined. Sometimes communication broke down. Sometimes logistics became the barrier. Sometimes people simply didn’t know mediation existed until litigation had already begun. It’s the same story then as it is now.
The demand for early conflict resolution clearly exists.
But there’s no system to coordinate early demand into equal commitment to participate, at the same time, all with a unified and clear vision of what mediation really is (and why it matters for them and their case).
These observations watered the seeds planted through San Francisco’s innovative Conflict Intervention Service program.
San Francisco demonstrated what became possible when organizations invested heavily in early intervention, and efforts are far and wide enough to create a culture of early resolution.
Bexar County demonstrated the extraordinary value (and inherent constraints) of downstream, court-connected mediation.
Rather than competing with one another, those experiences complemented each other. One taught me downstream, court-heavy approaches; the other, upstream, pre-filing.
Each revealed different strengths. Each exposed different limitations.
Together, they helped sharpen the same question.
The Question That Changed Everything
After enough cases, enough conversations, and enough years inside multiple dispute resolution systems, I found myself asking a different question.
Not, “How can we become better mediators?”
From AAMA, Texas Mediators Credentialing Association and Texas Association of Mediators, we have plenty of that.
Rather, I kept asking:
How do we redesign systems so fewer disputes ever need court in the first place?
(Of course, mediators improving their skills and increasing business acumen matters; but there’s a seismic shift when mediators move from only after lawsuits to before them.)
It’s a question I’ve since discovered many judges, court administrators, and mediation leaders have independently arrived at as well. More than once, I’ve found myself finishing that sentence alongside them—or hearing them finish it for me.
That convergence is telling.
People working at different points within the justice system are recognizing the same opportunity.
Earlier intervention.
Better coordination.
Greater public awareness.
More accessible pathways.
Systems that support people before conflict becomes litigation.
From Individual Cases to Systems Thinking
Those insights did not produce HousingShield on their own.
HousingShield emerged from years of learning across multiple environments:
- San Francisco’s Conflict Intervention Service
- Bexar County DRC
- Central Texas DRC
- American Bar Association public disputes and ombuds committee work
- Published conflict resolution research
And countless conversations with housing providers, judges, nonprofit leaders, fellow mediators, and plenty more ordinary Americans with observations of their own.
Each experience contributed a different piece of the puzzle.
Bexar County helped me understand the downstream system from the inside.
San Francisco demonstrated what ambitious upstream intervention could accomplish.
Together, they reinforced a belief that continues to shape my work today:
Conflict resolution is at its most powerful when we stop thinking only about resolving disputes—and start designing systems that help communities prevent unnecessary escalation altogether.
That’s the work Mosaic continues pursuing.
Not simply mediating the conflicts of today.
Helping build the dispute resolution systems communities will need tomorrow.
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