The reason I went on my trip to New England last week was to spend a day with a great chapter of my association and attend their annual conference. What I expected to do was talk with its leaders and members and share what we can do to further improve our organizational relationship. What I didn’t expect was to walk away with some pretty profound experiences.

In the past few months, I’ve come to learn about mediation as a practice and a profession. I’ve also gained a great deal of respect for those who mediate disputes (prior to landing at my current gig, I tried to mediate a staff conflict and discovered how difficult it is to do well). In a culture that seems to idolize the act of litigation, mediation is just a better way.

During the conference, I was able to attend a few sessions. One of the coolest was a workshop focused on helping practitioners use blogging as a marketing tool. It was led by three prominent bloggers in the field (which you really need to visit and read):

• Dina Beach Lynch – Mediation Mensch
• Diane Levin – Online Guide to Mediation
• Bob Ambrogi – Lawsites

An added bonus was that Tammy Lenski, author of Strategic Conversations, was there, too. To be honest, it was the first time that I’ve managed to find myself in a room with more than two bloggers in it (including myself) so this workshop experience was particularly neat.

Folks like them and other legal bloggers like Arnie Herz at Legal Sanity give the world of law a truly good name.