Equal Justice University 2025

The paralegal profession plays a pivotal role in the legal industry, offering essential support to attorneys and ensuring the smooth operation of legal processes. To enhance the skills and knowledge of paralegals, we propose a series of sessions focused on critical aspects of their work. These sessions aim to provide practical insights, ethical guidelines, and specialized training to empower paralegals in their professional roles.

Learning Objectives:

1. Assisting Attorneys with Drafting Documents and Trial Support 
2. Working with Domestic Violence Victims
3. Providing Victim Advocacy

One of the most powerful tools a mediator has is the ability to ask the right questions. The right question can bring clarity, shift perspective, promote empathy, and help people step back to examine their situation from a new angle. Asking questions is both an art and a skill. Legal professionals and mediators alike benefit from having a strong set of questions ready to use when the moment calls for it.

This presentation will explore how to interview and coach clients in conflict by using thoughtful, well-timed questions. We’ll cover what makes a question powerful, how to ask questions that move the conversation forward, and the different types of questions that can transform conflict and expand perspective.

Learning Objectives:

1. Understand how to use questions as a tool for conflict coaching and for gathering meaningful information from clients.    
2. Learn how to set the right tone when asking questions, and how tone can impact trust, clarity, and engagement.    
3. Explore different types of questions and build a go-to collection of questions to use in various conflict situations.