About
Sarah Baxa
For the past several years I have been in education, either teaching in a middle school or working in an administrative capacity in higher education. While I enjoy this work and working with faculty and students, I would like to turn my attention to the dispute management and resolution field. There are many opportunities in the education industry and many others where mediation, negotiation, and arbitration are underutilized. It is my goal to encourage people to look into alternatives to litigation to help resolve their disputes.
My professional interest is in furthering the field of dispute resolution and conflict management and I have seen more and more companies utilizing a tiered system of conflict resolution that often involves the use of an Ombuds or mediation techniques in hopes of avoiding formal complaints or lawsuits. I would like to be a part of that trend.
On a personal level, my interests include going to classic car shows with my family and riding my motorcycle.
Views on the practice of law
I believe that just as in any field, there are practitioners that run the spectrum of honesty, integrity, and ethics. I think lawyers are necessary to help decode our sometimes complicated laws. But the system is overwhelmed and all too often peole jump to the courts because they are not aware of alternatives. The practice of law is a necessary one and that laws are intended to keep order however there are many avenues of dispute resolution and conflict management besides litigation that can be as or even more effective than litigation and that litigation can be used as a last resort, rather than a first defense. The court systems have become clogged with cases that can be mitigated with different strategies such as mediation and I believe that sites such as Peopleclaim.com are proliferating this idea and encouraging these alternative methods in an easy to understand format with positive results. I would be thrilled to be a part of that.
Reason to be here
In my master's program, I took a class that focused solely on online dispute resolution (ODR). Prior to this class, I was very skeptical of using ODR because of its lack of face to face contact. We discussed in depth the lack of synchronous communication and how we lack the natural clues such as body language and intonation that can assist us in understanding the other person's intent in what they are saying. We might miss sadness, sarcasm, anger, frustration, or many other clues that in a face to face situation would be helpful. However, removing those clues is not such a negative. It removes the chance that you misread body language or voice intonation clues. Often times if emotion is removed from communication, it can help to bring the actual issues to the forefront and allow those involved to reflect on the situation and what the issues are and what they really want as a resolution instead of a knee jerk reaction to emotion. I truly hope I am considered for this internship because I have a lot to offer. I am a hard working, dedicated person who truly believes in alternatives to litigation.
