Professor John Haynes is a strong supporter of the rights of British lawyers to train as mediators -- although he is not a lawyer and has lived for the last 38 years in the USA where he is known as the 'father of family mediation'.He is in favour of Lord Mackay's much maligned proposals to steer most divorcing couples into mediation, finding them 'very responsible and the result of an enormous amount of thought'.

He also sees himself as the champion of family lawyers in their fight to secure equal access to mediation training with the mental health profession.

'My goal is to make sure that every solicitor in the UK who wants training in the next year gets it.'However, the bodies which are currently working to develop agreed and controlled national standards by forming the UK College of Family Mediators -- National Family Mediation (NFM), the Family Mediators Association (FMA), and Family Mediation Scotland (FMS) -- get short shrift from the professor.'At the moment it does seem to me that the college is blocking legal people from taking trainin g, and that is does not intend to have broad democratic representation, particularly for the legal profession.'The Law Society also comes under attack for failing, in his view, to ensure solicitors have an equal say with the mental health profession in the development of national standards.

'We should be working together to ensure that absolutely the best method is adopted,' he says.Neither does Professor Haynes support the Society and the SFLA in their fight to ensure that legal advice is available to divorcing couples on legal aid before, during and after mediation.'Anybody should have the choice of going to a solicitor, but I don't think there should be legal aid for it,' he says.

'If you can't afford to go to a solicitor, what do you have to fight about? Only the children, and a lawyer doesn't help in that matter.

On the children there are no clear cut legal questions.' When asked what a woman with concerns about property should do if her husband refuses to pay for her to see a solicitor and legal aid is not available, he says the woman should refuse to stay in mediation unless the husband pays.

A psychologist by profession, Professor Haynes spent 15 years as a labour management negotiator and another 12 teaching social policy and conflict at the State University of New York.

His first article on mediation was published in 1978.

since then he has trained over 15,000 professionals in mediation and conflict management, including over 500 in the UK.

His most recent book, Fundamentals of Family Mediation (Old Bailey Press), has been translated into eight languages and is required reading for most mediation training programmes.

In the USA he is the founding president of the Academy of Family Mediators; president of the Mediation Training Institute; and a consultant to court systems all over the USA.

He has run and developed training programmes in New Zealand, Norway, Holland, Austria and Germany, and he ran his first training course in Britain for NFM ten years ago.This impressive range of experience makes him a soothing presence in Britain, where mediation is seen by many family lawyers as the vast unknown.'In New York at first there was an outcry against mediation,' he says.

'Lawyers didn't like it one iota, and they tried to claim it was an illegal practice of law.

But now they have accepted mediation as part of their lives.'The professor says that the model of co-mediation, in which both a lawyer mediator and a non-lawyer mediator who has a social work background conduct negotiations with the couple, is a uniquely British phenomenon which is unreasonably expensive.

It is also harder to conduct because the two mediators have to co-ordinate with each other as well as with the couple.Both NFM and FMA currently practise co-mediation, but Professor Haynes teaches the sole mediation model.

And he thinks that, although not all lawyers are brilliant mediators, 'the best lawyer mediators are the best mediators'.In Europe and the USA, he says, there is general agreement that mediation training should consist of about 200 hours of basic training, follow-up training, consultation and practice over a two-year period.'We should agree on standards in Britain quickly because otherwise when the Divorce Bill becomes law there will not be enough trained mediators,' he says.

'This should not be so difficult because we could pick up the German model tomorrow and it would suffice.'He disagrees with proposals that mediators should be supervised by the College of Family Mediators.

In his model, groups of mediators meet for consultati on for a few hours every other week, at minimum expense, to discuss problems with cases they are working on.In 1996 Professor Haynes will be doing about 50 days' training in the UK.

Under the auspices of London-based Lowe & Gordon Mediation Training he will be running a series of one-day seminars and five-day mediation training programmes for solicitors all over the country.He supports the British Association of Lawyer Mediators (BALM), which has just been set up to represent lawyer mediators in both the family and the commercial spheres.

The founders of BALM, who include Guildford solicitor Alastair Logan, all trained with Professor Haynes.'I want to make sure that mediation is being taught from the perspective of it being the management of other people's negotiations,' says Professor Haynes.

'The typical lawyer has a tremendous background in negotiating which can be transferred into the management of other people's negotiations.'During a course organised by the Divorce and Arbitration Centre and attended by the Gazette, Professor Haynes approached mediation training very practically.

'Your eyes must constantly move between the couple,' he says.

'You must feel the back of your chair in the small of your back.

There should be a space between you, not a desk, and women mediators should wear trousers so as not to worry about their skirt moving.'He makes lawyers use role plays and therapy-style workshops to rid themselves of adversarial bias.

On his courses they take it in turns to play husband, wife and mediator under the scrutiny of their peers.'How are we going to reach an agreement if you're dictated to by a nine-year-old?' demanded solicitor Michael Theeman, of Colchester firm Fisher Jones.

'You leave my mother out of this,' replied barrister Jennifer Beckhough.