Not many people relish the chance to get between two bickering neighbors, or a landlord and a dissatisfied tenant, or a teenaged burglar and his victims.

But that's the mission of a nonprofit organization expanding into the western suburbs. Community Mediation Services tries to tackle disputes by persuading people who disagree to sit down and talk it over.

It seems to work. Last year, the group helped 92 percent of the parties it served through community mediation to reach agreements.

"We believe that people can resolve most of their own disputes without the courts, without the police, through mediation," said Beth Bailey-Allen, CMS's executive director.

Bailey-Allen and her small staff rely on more than 100 volunteer mediators, people from a variety of backgrounds who spend a few days a month working as unpaid mediators.

There are two kinds of mediation: entirely voluntary community mediation sessions -- CMS handles about 400 per year, with a 92 percent success rate -- and mediation sessions required by judges -- CMS is involved in more than 1,000 such sessions a year.

Judges in housing court, harassment court and conciliation court (where disputes involving less than $7,500 are handled) often require parties to spend some time with mediators before their cases are decided.

When court dockets are busy, the short mediation sessions give plaintiffs and defendants a chance to be heard, and to come up with creative solutions to their disputes.

But how do you get people in a dispute -- who sometimes have a long history of fighting with and even hating each other -- to agree on anything?

"Sometimes it's absolutely magical," said Karen Chesebrough, a volunteer mediator from Plymouth.

It seems to start with absolute neutrality on the part of the mediators. What happens in mediation is confidential, and mediators would not discuss the particulars of any case, but they describe the process as one of give and take: Each party in a dispute gets to state their case, while the other party listens respectfully.

"Some people have been fighting so long, and they have never sat down to talk," said Marcela Sotela, a volunteer mediator from Maple Grove. The beginning of mediations, when participants get to explain themselves, is so important, she said. "Just the fact that they got it off their chest is therapeutic."

Sometimes just hearing from the other party is enough to help someone see a situation from the opponent's perspective.

CMS often conducts mediations with children in schools, dealing with issues such as bullying and gossiping. Janelle Leppa, a Hopkins resident who has mediated disputes between fourth- and fifth-graders, said children are especially generous in admitting they have been wrong.

"You get a group of kids together and they are so articulate and thoughtful," she said. The mediation process "allows kids to see the impact of their actions on others," something they may not have realized before, Leppa said.

CMS uses the same approach with juvenile offenders: In the same room with their parents and their crime victims, they see the consequences of their crimes face-to-face. "It's a process that's far more effective than what we're currently doing for juvenile misdemeanors" in the court system, Bailey-Allen said.

One key to mediation's success, Bailey-Allen said, is "even though the mediators don't have any say in the outcome, everybody wants the mediators to think they're the reasonable ones."

Mediators need to be good listeners -- "both to verbal and body language," said mediator Janet Mauer. A dispute between a business and a customer might technically be about money, but it might really be about something else -- rudeness or offense taken at some slight.

"A mediator is trained to pick up on what's going on ...what's really bugging you," said Sandy Hanf, a mediator from Deephaven.

Community Mediation Services was previously called North Hennepin Mediation Program, but it changed its name last year. It has been expanding into western Hennepin County ever since a St. Louis Park-based mediation group folded in 2001.

CMS has contracts with 14 cities, including Maple Grove, Corcoran, Minnetonka, Orono, St. Louis Park, Hopkins, Mound and Plymouth. City agencies and police refer cases to CMS that aren't appropriate for the courts but might need mediation.

Often those disputes are between neighbors. They start as minor fights over trees, fences or maintenance, but can escalate into bitter disputes

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