AI: What happened this year and where are we now?

presented by Dr. Clare Fowler, Colin Rule, and Jim Melamed

Thursday, December 3, 2026

1:30 PM – 3:00 PM Eastern (10:30 AM - 12:00 PM Pacific)

Non-Member Registration

About the Webinar

In this webinar, Dr. Clare Fowler, Colin Rule, and Jim Melamed will take family mediators on a fast-paced tour of the year’s biggest AI developments and what these updates actually mean for mediation practice. Through live demonstrations of the tools mediators are using right now — for intake, preparation, drafting, and supporting difficult conversations — they’ll show what AI does well and where it still falls short, and the questions regarding security and confidentiality that every practitioner needs to be asking before putting client information into any system. The session will close with a look ahead at what’s coming in the next year, so you’ll leave with a realistic picture of where AI stands in family mediation today, what to adopt, what to avoid, and how to use these tools in ways that empower — rather than diminish — the capacities of families and professionals at the table.

About the Presenter

Dr. Clare Fowler

Executive Vice-President of ODR.com
International Woman of Peace Award, 2024
Author of Rising Above Office Conflict: the light-hearted guide for the heavy-hearted employee

Dr. Clare Fowler received her Doctorate on designing dispute resolution systems for small businesses from Pepperdine University Graduate School of Education/Organizational Leadership and her Master’s of Dispute Resolution from the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution at the Pepperdine University School of Law. Dr. Fowler also works as Managing Editor and with Caseload Manager at Mediate.com. She teaches at Pepperdine Straus Dispute Resolution Department and University of Oregon. Clare mediates and trains, focusing on workplace disputes. Dr. Fowler’s dissertation was a phenomenological study of Workplace disputes. Her 2023 book, Rising Above Office Conflict, is a guidebook for HR directors dealing with high conflict behaviors. Her motto for the dispute resolution field? Rising Tides Raise All Boats.

Colin Rule

Colin Rule is President and CEO of ODR.com/Mediate.com, acquired by the American Arbitration Association/International Centre for Dispute Resolution in May 2024. From 2003 to 2011 Colin was Director of ODR for eBay and PayPal. In 2011 Colin co-founded Modria.com, an ODR provider based in Silicon Valley, which was acquired by Tyler Technologies in 2017. From 2017 to 2020 Colin served as Vice President of ODR at Tyler.

Colin has worked in the dispute resolution field for 30 years as a mediator, trainer, and consultant. He is currently Co-Chair of the Advisory Board at the National Center for Technology and Dispute Resolution at UMass-Amherst, a Non-Resident Fellow at the Gould Center for Conflict Resolution at Stanford Law School, and Practitioner-in-Residence at Texas A&M School of Law.

Colin co-founded Online Resolution, one of the first online dispute resolution (ODR) providers, in 1999 and served as its CEO and President. In 2002 Colin co-founded the Online Public Disputes Project, which applied ODR to multiparty, public disputes. Colin also worked for several years with the National Institute for Dispute Resolution in Washington, D.C. and the Consensus Building Institute in Cambridge, MA.

Colin is the author of Online Dispute Resolution for Business (published by Jossey-Bass in September 2002) and co-author of The New Handshake: Online Dispute Resolution and the Future of Consumer Protection (published by the American Bar Association in 2017). He received the D'Alemberte-Raven Award from the American Bar Association in 2023, the first Frank Sander Award for Innovation in ADR from the ABA in 2020, and the Mary Parker Follett Award from the Association for Conflict Resolution in 2013. He holds a Master's degree from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in conflict resolution and technology, a graduate certificate in dispute resolution from UMass-Boston, and a B.A. in Peace Studies from Haverford College. He served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Eritrea from 1995-1997.

Jim Melamed

Jim Melamed co-founded Mediate.com in 1996 along with John Helie and served as CEO of Mediate.com through June 2020 (25 years). Jim is currently General Counsel to Mediate.com and ODR.com.

Before Mediate.com, Jim founded The Mediation Center in Eugene, Oregon in 1983 and served as Executive Director of the Academy of Family Mediators (AFM) from 1987 to 1993. Jim was also the first President and Executive Director of the Oregon Mediation Association (1985-86).

Jim's undergraduate degree is in psychology from Stanford University and his law degree is from the University of Oregon.

Jim has received the following awards: The Oregon Mediation Association's 2003 Award for Excellence and 2020 Lifetime Achievement Award; The Oregon State Bar's 2006 Sidney Lezak Award of Excellence; The Association for Conflict Resolution (ACR) 2007 John Haynes Distinguished Mediator Award; and The 2012 Academy of Professional Family Mediators (APFM) "Getting To Yes" Award and 2018 APFM first Outstanding Mediator Award.

Time and Place

Thursday, December 3, 2026
1:30 PM – 3:00 PM Eastern (10:30 AM - 12:00 PM Pacific)

Cost

$50 for Non-members

Free for APFM Members

More Information about the Webinar

Only APFM members will receive an email with instructions on how to log into the webinar, to be held using the services of zoom.us. If you are uncertain about the status of your APFM membership, log into the APFM website to check it. Help logging in is available here: https://apfmnet.org/website-help/.

You may wish to download the Zoom client software for your computer, tablet or smartphone prior to the webinar: https://zoom.us/download. The software should work on most computers. APFM cannot provide technical support for software issues.

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Confirmed APFM members will be sent login information after registration and prior to the webinar. For webinar access questions, please contact [email protected]. Please note that it may not be possible to provide immediate assistance on the day of the webinar.