Steve Cerveris is a full-time, independent mediator and principal of CERVERIS MEDIATION. Steve devoted the first 15 years of his forty-year legal career to representing Plaintiffs and Defendants as a trial attorney in various areas of litigation. For the last 25 years his career has exclusively involved mediating litigated cases. Assisting his clients through the emotionally and economically draining, time-consuming challenges of litigation ultimately led him to pursue the field of alternate dispute resolution. Steve’s goal was and is to help people embroiled in litigation find a more humane, positive way to resolve conflict. In this episode, Steve relates the story of children in a church school, their molestation by a trusted pastor, and the devastating effect molestation had on their lives and relationships. The mediation conducted by Steve was complicated, and was not only effective in settling a lawsuit, but was also able to provide a means by which healing could begin, in part, through institutional changes.

Steve Cerveris is a cum laude graduate of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and received his J.D. degree from Loyola Law School of Los Angeles where he served as both a Writer and Editor on the Loyola Law Review. His litigation career involved serving the County of Los Angeles as a Deputy Public Defender, working for several boutique business litigation and entertainment law firms and ultimately establishing his own law firm where he provided civil litigation trial services. Steve’s patience, persistence, humor, and excellent communication skills continue to contribute to his success and effectiveness as one of California’s “Top Neutrals.”

In addition to his professional Mediation services, Steve has also dedicated himself to furthering the field of Alternate Dispute Resolution by serving as a member of the Board of Directors of the Southern California Mediation Association (SCMA), and as a member of the Los Angeles Superior Court’s Alternate Dispute Resolution Committee as well as a member and Chair of the California State Bar’s Committee on Alternate Dispute Resolution.

He is a frequent speaker on Mediation, having addressed audiences at Bar Associations, Universities, Mediation Organizations, the Los Angeles Superior Court and as a Guest Lecturer at the Constitutional Rights Foundation’s Summer Law Institute at UCLA Law School and a frequent guest lecturer teaching an Advanced Mediation Training Course at the Los Angeles County Bar Association’s Center for Civic Mediation.

Steve received the Volunteer of the Year Award from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and the Los Angeles County Dispute Resolution Program for his services as a volunteer mediator with the Los Angeles Superior Court and has been recognized as a California “Top Neutral” by the Los Angeles and San Francisco Daily Journal. He has also been recognized annually as a Southern California “SuperLawyer” in the field of Alternate Dispute Resolution by Law & Politics and Los Angeles Magazines since 2006, and by his peers in “Best Lawyers” in America as referenced in U.S. News & World Report and the Wall Street Journal.