A JAMS Q&A Session: Shining the Spotlight on Hon. John M. Mott (Ret.)

Please provide a brief overview of your legal career prior to joining JAMS.

I spent 30 years in the courtroom as a trial lawyer and then as a trial judge before joining JAMS in 2018. I started out as a criminal trial lawyer at the Public Defender Service in Washington, D.C., and then as a federal civil rights prosecutor at the Department of Justice, trying cases in courthouses around the U.S., and I ran the Criminal Section of the Civil Rights Division as acting chief before my appointment to the bench by the president in 2000. In the last seven years of my 18-year tenure on the court, I focused exclusively on the civil calendar, handling a diverse array of cases and issues that I now frequently encounter as a mediator, arbitrator and neutral case evaluator. During this period, I presided over civil jury trials, successfully mediated numerous cases and found such fulfillment in mediation that I decided to leave the bench to join JAMS.

How would you describe your ADR and mediation style?

My focus is always on the goal—whether that is a settlement, a reasoned arbitration decision or an objective and helpful neutral evaluation critique—and not on myself. It matters to me to always be prepared, organized, balanced, responsive and fair. I am an optimist by nature, which certainly helps in mediation. I work comfortably around a wide range of people, and I do not give up. Above all, my goal is to always be effective.

Mediation is my passion. I love the challenge, the reward and the variety. I enjoy quickly getting up to speed on the essential legal and factual issues so that I can be effectively evaluative and work with the parties in a productive and tactical manner. I handle matters of all types and complexity from all over the U.S. with one goal: reaching a settlement. My assumption is that every case will settle, and I stay with the case until it does.

What practice areas are you passionate about and why?

As a trial judge, mediator and arbitrator, I have presided over or handled disputes of almost every type: employment, contract, construction, consumer protection, intellectual property, antitrust, civil rights, legal and medical malpractice, wrongful death and personal injury, family and many others. I love the variety and challenge too much to focus on one or two distinct practice areas. For that same reason, I handle mediations and other matters from all over the U.S. and with overseas litigants, not just cases from my home base in Washington, D.C.

What traits have contributed to your success as a mediator?

Much goes into successful mediation. I believe my background and experience— particularly the decades of familiarity with a wide range of procedural and legal issues—have been essential to my evaluative approach to helping parties resolve their disputes. Also crucial is the ability to figure out complex issues quickly and to simplify them while at the same time knowing (and being prepared to acknowledge) what I don’t know so I can ask, research and truly understand the matters before me. I strive to learn what the parties want and work to find the common ground. Doing this effectively requires patience, an interest in others and the ability to work with almost anyone. People need to be and feel heard. I am always aware that at each moment in a mediation, my word choice, timing and tone matter. As a mediator, I recognize that settlement is up to the parties, but I work to provide clear and evaluative input so that they understand the strengths and weaknesses of their positions and move to a place where they are constructive and practical in their thinking and approaches. That almost always leads to a settlement.

What are some of the highlights of your career to date, whether in alternative dispute resolution (ADR) or litigation?

I have had the privilege of working in meaningful ways with great colleagues over the last 35 years, in and around the courtroom and at JAMS. As a trial lawyer, it was exciting to try important cases in D.C. and around the U.S., and I thoroughly enjoyed presiding over trials as a judge. As a mediator, each settlement is a highlight of its own because I know how much resolution matters to the parties and process.

A different experience that stands out in my memory involved co-teaching a class called The American Jury for 13 years with my close friend, the late Judge Ricardo Urbina. This provided me the opportunity to learn and grow through collaboration with a truly great person and thinker. We and the students always found our “Meet the Jury” session to be most exciting. For this special class, we brought in 12 to 15 jurors from our prior year’s trials at the superior court and U.S. district court as we directed an almost three-hour conversation between students and jurors about the jurors’ observations and every aspect of their experience. This extensive “look under the hood” of the jury system—along with the extraordinary experience of serving as a juror myself while a sitting judge in the very same courthouse—has provided invaluable perspective to my role as a mediator and neutral case evaluator where discussion often involves how a jury may assess a particular witness, argument or issue.

In addition to being a mediator and an arbitrator, you also serve as a neutral evaluator. How does your background lend itself to that kind of work, and what is the benefit of this kind of service for clients?

It is natural for counsel to lose a degree of perspective on a matter that they may have been immersed in for months or years, and it can be invaluable to receive feedback from an experienced outsider who is seeing the matter with fresh eyes and is able to provide clear and productive evaluation. I have spent my entire legal career focused on issues that benefit from effective neutral evaluation, whether providing critique and feedback on a witness’s testimony or a lawyer’s proposed closing argument or discussing specific issues with briefing or overall case strategy. I find it extremely rewarding to serve in the role of neutral case evaluator and have been pleased to work with counsel throughout the country in this capacity.

What makes for effective neutral case evaluation?

Effective neutral case evaluation requires an approach that is substantive, direct and clear. Most importantly, this means truly understanding the issues and effectively communicating crucial points to counsel—how they, their witness or their argument will come across and be received by a judge or a jury. For example, it is one thing to comment that a brief or closing argument is disorganized or unclear; it is another to be able to pick out the key features that create that impression, make suggestions for improvement and explain why it matters.

What accomplishment are you most proud of?

My career in the law has brought a great sense of accomplishment and fulfillment along with plenty of challenges. Over the last 10 years or so, that sense of professional accomplishment has come primarily from successfully handling dozens of mediations from across the country. Along the way, I have also found contentment and reward from my work in the community as a youth track and soccer coach and with different legal organizations, my time as a dad and my relationships with family and friends. We all learn and grow as people and professionals though our interactions with others. Even in a mediation, it is often the connection and relationship that are most essential in bringing the parties to resolution.