Retired Cook County judge Jerome Lerner will be honored during a Thursday, March 9, brown-bag luncheon program on court-annexed mediation skills and procedures in courtroom 2005 of the Richard J. Daley Center.

The free program, “Co-mediation of Med-ical Negligence Cases,” is sponsored by the Cook County Circuit Court Law Division and the ISBA Alternative Dispute Resolution Section Council.

Speakers are Geoffrey L. Gifford of Pavalon, Gifford, Laatsch & Marino, a past chair of the ISBA Alternative Dispute Resolution Section Council, and Richard H. Donohue of Donohue, Brown, Mathewson & Smyth.

A pioneer in ADR, Lerner will receive a Service to the Community Award for outstanding contributions to the field from the Center for Analysis of Dispute Resolution Systems. The presentation will be made by Chief Judge Timothy C. Evans.

As the courts turned to dispute resolution two decades ago to ease docket congestion and reduce the cost of litigation, Lerner was appointed chair of the Illinois Supreme Court Committee to Recommend Rules for Mandatory Arbitration.

He also chaired the Supreme Court's ADR Coordinating Committee, the Illinois Judicial Conference Study Committee on ADR, and the Illinois Judges Association Task Force on Dispute Resolution.

Lerner is a mediation consultant to the legal department at Rush University Medical Center, where he was co-founder of a voluntary medical malpractice mediation program.

To register for the March 9 program, call Raimonda Ferenzi at (312) 603-6078 or Kim Atz at (312) 793-0125.