Bill Eddy, LCSW, Esq.
Project Director & Lead Interviewer
Bill Eddy, Project Director and Lead Interviewer, is a therapist (12 years as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker), lawyer (15 years as a Certified Family Law Specialist), and mediator (15 years as the Senior Family Mediator at the National Conflict Resolution Center in San Diego, California). He is the co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer of the High Conflict Institute in San Diego, California. Mr. Eddy provides training worldwide on the subject of high-conflict personalities to lawyers, mediators, judges, mental health professionals, human resources, and others. He has presented in over 35 states and 10 countries. In 2021, Bill received the SCMA Star Award from the Southern California Mediation Association for Excellence and Innovation in Family Mediation and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy of Professional Family Mediators.
He serves on the faculty of the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution at the Pepperdine University School of Law in California and is a conjoint associate professor with the University of Newcastle Law School in Australia. He is the author or co-author of 20 books and manuals. His popular blog on the Psychology Today website has more than 5 million views.
Mr. Eddy is the author of several books, including Mediating High Conflict Disputes; High Conflict People in Legal Disputes; and Calming Upset People with EAR; and the BIFF Conflict Communication Series. He is the developer of the New Ways for Families® method for potentially high-conflict families, which is being implemented in several family court systems in several countries. He is also the developer of the New Ways for Mediation® method, which emphasizes more structure by the mediator and more negotiation skills for the parties.
Hon. Karen Adam (Ret.)
Interviewer
The Honorable Karen Adam, Interviewer, retired from the bench in November 2015 after 34 years of service as a Tucson City Court Magistrate, a Superior Court Commissioner, and a Superior Court Judge. As presiding judge of the Pima County Juvenile Court from 2011-2014, Judge Adam led the effort to convert PCJCC to a trauma-responsive court. She facilitated a trauma audit of the Court, and implemented many of the recommendations, including training for all court employees and system partners in trauma and vicarious trauma.
Judge Adam is a member of the Self-Represented Litigation Network, the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ), the Arizona and National Chapters of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts. She is a board member and past president of the Center for Children’s Law and Policy and teaches and consults on Family Treatment Drug Court grants and programs.
Judge Adam writes and lectures on juvenile and family law topics and has served as faculty for the National Judicial College since 2007 and as a Professor or Practice for the University of Arizona Rogers College of Law since 2018.
Annette T. Burns, JD
Interviewer
Annette T. Burns, Interviewer, is an attorney and a certified Family Law Specialist, practicing in Arizona. She is a past president of the international interdisciplinary organization the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC), a nonprofit organization of over 5000 international family law related professionals. She has been a Fellow of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers (AAML), a national organization composed of the nation’s top attorneys since 2001.
She is a co-author of the Thompson Reuters publication Arizona Family Law Rules Handbook, which is updated annually, and she served on every Arizona Supreme Court Committee that created, adopted, and revised the Arizona Rules of Family Law Procedure from 2003 through the present. She is also co-author of BIFF for CoParent Communication (2021).
Her awards include the Community Legal Services/ Children’s Law Center Mentor of the Year Award and the State Bar of Arizona Family Law Section Lifetime Achievement Award. She has been named a SuperLawyer every year from 2007-2020 and one of SuperLawyers’ Arizona’s Top Female Attorneys in 2013, 2014 and 2019. Her private practice in Arizona focuses on family law, including a wide variety of neutral positions including parenting coordination, mediation, Special Master, expert witness opinions, and the representation of children. Annette lives in Scottsdale, Arizona with her husband.
