ABOUT LOTANE MEDIATION
Doug Lotane is a mediator, attorney, and Guardian ad litem. Before founding Lotane & Associates, Doug was employed as an international management consultant, as a multi-line insurance adjustor while in law school, as house counsel for the former Commercial Union Insurance Company, served as lead subrogation attorney for Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield of Maine, and maintained a solo law practice in Portland and Kennebunk.
Education
Doug received a B.A in Germanic Studies from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1984 and his J.D. from Suffolk University Law School in Boston in 1990.
Formal Dispute Resolution Training
After coursework in dispute resolution at Suffolk University Law School, Doug completed formal mediation training in 2002 under Jonathan Reitman, Kathryn Monahan Ainsworth, Ann Gosline, and Ericka Gray - some of the most respected mediators in New England. In 2004, Doug completed courses of study in negotiation and mediation at the Program on Negotiation (PON) at Harvard Law School, a consortium of Tufts University, MIT, and Harvard University. Doug participated in the first two International Conferences on Transformative Mediation in 2004 in Philadelphia and 2006 in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Dispute Resolution Panels
Doug has served on the Maine court mediation service (CADRES) rosters for mediation of divorce, small claims, general litigation, and forcible entry and detainer cases. He has also been a mediator for the family mediation program of the Opportunity Alliance. Doug has been chosen as a panelist on several Medical Malpractice Screening Panels in Maine, served on the Maine Residential Real Estate Mediation Program roster, and has arbitrated cases for the Better Business Bureau of New England.
Preventative Law
What do we mean when we say that we are “specialists in preventative law”?
Consider the following quote taken from The State of Justice speech given by Warren Burger, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, in 1984:
"The entire legal profession… has become so mesmerized with the stimulation of the courtroom contest, that we tend to forget that we ought to be healers of conflict… trial by adversarial contest must in time go the way of the ancient trial by battle and blood… our system has become too costly, too painful, too destructive, too inefficient for truly civilized people."
Although over 37 years have passed since those words were uttered, they still ring true today. When we say that we are specialists in preventative law, what we mean, quite simply, is that we try to use our legal skills in creative and often non-traditional ways to solve problems for our clients. In employing the processes of mediation and collaborative law, we endeavor to be the healers of conflict envisioned by Chief Justice Burger and hope to minimize the costs, pain, and destruction experienced by our clients as they navigate the legal system.
