When family law mediator Diana B. Sparagna is looking to inspire her divorce clients to compromise, she tells them to sit back, relax and watch the movie “Invictus”. The message she’s sending: If Nelson Mandela can put aside years of brutal racial discrimination to try to lead a united country, surely you can hammer out your differences over shared assets. Do it for the kids, she tells clients. Sparagna, a long-time personal injury and workers’ compensation attorney, splits her time between practicing mediation and litigation in Monrovia and Reseda, where Sparagna & Sparagna, the law firm she owns with her husband, is based. The 59-year-old said she started her mediation practice, Resolution Solution, more than two years ago, because she spotted a ripe business opportunity: corporate contracts are increasingly requiring mediation or arbitration (which Sparagna also handles) if a dispute arises, and recent budget cuts have the court struggling to provide services in a timely manner. “I could see it’s the wave of the future, because the courts are closing down and law firms can’t afford to litigate cases anymore,” Sparagna said. Her husband and law partner offered another reason: The couple has taken care of several severely injured clients after Diana tried their case, Francis Sparagna said. After decades in the rough and tumble world of litigation — including more than 2,500 workers’ compensation cases, several of which were heard by the California Supreme Court — it was necessary to take on a less stressful job. “She said, ‘I’d like to be able to do something that I can contribute, try to resolve a case with other skills that I may have and be able to walk away and not have it linger with me so I can go to sleep at night,” Francis Sparagna said. She’s done about 200 mediations since launching the business, charging $350 an hour for her private practice. Besides family law mediations, Sparagna handles business and personal injury disputes as well. One of the challenges, Sparagna said is trying to work around attorneys who she says would rather keep their clients in protracted, expensive litigation. It’s also impacted the way she handles litigation. Now if a case is close to a resolution, she said she’s more willing to settle. “As a litigator my reputation is I was never a settler,” she said. To get divorcing couples to put down the gloves she calls upon her heroes: Jackie Robinson, Mother Theresa, Roberto Clemente, John Wooden — but most importantly Nelson Mandela. She also calls upon her experiences playing team sports and growing up as the middle child to help fashion agreements between parties. “You will never be a good mediator unless you are yourself,” she said. Clients for private mediations, she said, come mostly from doctors, lawyers and the San Fernando Valley and Ventura County bar associations. She also is a volunteer mediator at several courts, including the Los Angeles Superior Court in Van Nuys and Burbank. About 50 percent of her cases come through the court system, she said. While the decision to start a mediation practice was to join a growing and hopefully less stressful field, Sparagna says it hasn’t proved as lucrative as her career as a litigator. She took a pay cut to get started. Sparagna declined to reveal how much less she takes in as a mediator than as a litigator, but she provided an example of the impact. She recently switched out the BMW 7 Series for a Toyota Prius. Getting started has been tough, she said, given the crowded mediation field, but she loves the process. “I am going to make a lot less money, but I don’t care. This is what I am going to do.”
