You are not paid what you are worth and you have skills that lawyers would pay big bucks for! The fact that you speak 2 languages fluently and that you have ties to an ethnic community proves that with a little effort, you can have a good part time income on your days off. All day long you hear your clients talk about their problems. Some of them want to divorce but don't know who they can trust. They trust you and if you can introduce them to a divorce lawyer, all of you can benefit.

Do you know how many couples stay together because they are so intimidated by divorce court? They have heard the horror stories about nasty divorces and they don't want to get involved in an ugly court fight. Those kinds of couples are PERFECT for mediation. If you don't know those people, you want to find them. You want to ask around the community and see who fits this description. The last step is to find a mediator you want to work with.

Mediators can usually be found in the phone book under Divorce Assistance. Call around and interview the lawyers. Tell them that you are looking to establish a referral relationship with a great mediator. Ask how many couples they have helped with mediation and what percentage of those cases have settled. Ask them how long a mediation usually takes and how much they charge. You will want ot know if the majority of their practice is mediation or if they are really litigators in sheep's clothing. Ask them if it would be worth $250 for you to bring them a couple and do the translation for the day. You may have to negotiate your translation fee but you are worth at least $150! So that you can compare their answers to mine, I have 100% success rate with over 185 couples. I only do mediation, nothing else. On average it takes me between 4-7 hours to do a mediation. I have very special skills that most lawyers don't have in that I was a special education teacher for many years and have a Masters in teaching severely emotionally disturbed children, so I have yet to meet a couple I couldn't work with. But there are a lot of skilled mediators who are dying for new business. It is best to work with a lawyer who is a mediator, that way they can do all the legal forms and get everything done for the couple. But you need to watch out for lawyers who say they are mediators but are really just trying to cash in on a good thing. It is important that at least half their practice involves mediation. With just a little work, you can have a steady stream of clients to translate for and you can help others and yourself at the same time.


------

Ms. Rachman has been a family law attorney since 1996 and has become so disheartened by our adversarial legal system that she walked away from a successful law practice and now only works with couples doing mediation. She is interested in hearing from bilingual translators and will pay top dollar for their services. For more information on how mediation works and what kind of couples do best in mediation listen to an audio on the differences between litigation and mediation at
http://www.divorce-inaday.com