Podcast Transcript: Engaging Judges & Court Staff Podcast Transcript

Series' Guests

• Loretta Frederick, JD, the former Senior Legal and Policy Advisor of the Battered Women’s Justice Project
• Associate Justice Anne K. McKeig, Minnesota Supreme Court
• Ret. Judge Jeffrey Kremers, Milwaukee County Circuit Court
• Gretta Gardner, JD, the Deputy Director of Ujima Inc.: The National Center on Violence Against Women in the Black Community
  
  
   

JUDGE JEFFREY KREMERS: I think listening is a really important and difficult skill to master, but it's so critical. Just like we're telling them to listen to the stories that are in front of them and how they listen to victims. We need to do the same as facilitators to listen, what's really going on with them? What are the pressures that they're facing from their administrators, their colleagues, their community, and where can we meet them where they're at?

AARON POLKEY: Welcome to Facilitating Complex Topics With Complex Audiences, I'm your host, Aaron Polkey. This is part one of a four-part series on Facilitating Complex Topics With Complex Audiences, our goal today is to share some of our individual experiences with a particularly complex audience, court staff and judges. And to help us with our discussion today, we have the pleasure of welcoming two judges and someone who's quite experienced from the court staff perspective. So first I'd love to introduce our judges, and our first judge is actually a justice on the Minnesota Supreme Court. The 94th Justice, as a matter of fact, on the Minnesota Supreme Court, Justice Anne McKeig. Welcome.

JUSTICE ANNE MCKEIG: Thanks for having me.

POLKEY: And we're also pleased to welcome retired Milwaukee Circuit Judge Jeffrey Kremers.

KREMERS: Good afternoon, glad to be here.

POLKEY: And that court staffer that I was pleased to allude to with us today, my good friend Danielle Pugh, who's the Director of Judicial Leadership and Education at the Center for Court Innovation. Welcome, Danielle.

DANIELLE PUGH: Thank you, glad to be here.

POLKEY: So you all have worked with judges and courts and stakeholders and judicial environments in the judicial system for many, many years. And so just as a point of introduction and to lay some context, we'll start with you, Justice McKeig. What exactly do you do and how long have you been doing it, as a justice of the Supreme Court? And then you can also talk to us a little bit about your previous experiences as a judge and also as an attorney.

MCKEIG: Well, my kids should be interested in this answer because it's what they ask me all the time is, what is it that I exactly do? So as an Associate Justice on the Minnesota Supreme Court, it's much different than the district court work, in that we are leading the state. We have about 300 trial court judges within our state, and then we have a intermediate appellate court, which has 19 judges on it, and then we have our Supreme Court of which there are seven of us. So we take cases on petitions for review, not all cases, but the ones that we feel have important statewide issues that need to be addressed. And then also, we have some that are mandatory that we take. So other than just the case work which happens twice ... Well, the first two weeks of every month, two cases generally on a day, which seems quite humorous compared to the loads that district court judges or trial court judges have.

We do a lot of other policy work, so we're working on committees with our district court colleagues, as well as other court staff. Rule making, just how the overall system is functioning, and trying to make sure that the machine is running efficiently as possible. So it is a view from statewide rather than just a county or a judicial district. And so that has been very interesting because you get to see all of the different practices across the state, which vary greatly, as you can imagine, from urban to rural to our tribal communities. So that has been an eye-opening experience. But when it goes back to the district court, I always think of the district court as the emergency room work, where you are managing a courtroom and you are dealing with people's issues who are in crisis, generally, right before you. It's a much more hands on approach rather than the distance review that we have at our level. So very different job, very different focuses, but I think when you add the two of them together, hopefully it makes me a better justice.

POLKEY: Well, you're able to compare those two judicial environments, and I'm wondering, when you look back to your personal experiences, your professional experiences, the heart that you bring to your work, how does that inform how you interact with your colleagues on the bench, court staff? What is it about your personal experiences that influences most how you interact with those that you see in a courthouse or at the Supreme Court?

MCKEIG: Yeah, that's a great question and it's really interesting because I don't know that I recognized how much my personal life or upbringing influenced the way that I did my work. Of course, we all bring that with us no matter what we do. But at the district court level, I think it was different in that I could recognize a lot of the issues with people who came before the court, because it's either something that someone in my family or someone in my close circle had experienced. So that was not foreign to me, which I think was helpful in thinking through whatever the issue was.

POLKEY: That's fascinating. And you speak about bringing your whole self onto the bench and some of the insecurities that you spoke of just makes me wonder, when we get to the crux of our conversation, how more challenging it probably is for a survivor of intimate partner violence to interact in those environments if those of us who are in and out of those environments every day feel a little lump in our throat sometimes too. And I can certainly relate. Judge Kremers, you're retired now, you were on the bench for decades. So tell us from the point of view of someone who can take a breath and look back at their experience about your work as a judge. Your work as an attorney. What you did and how long you did it. And then if you can go ahead and also talk about some of the personal intersections between your life and your professional and personal experiences and how that impacted the ways that you discharged your role.

KREMERS: Sure. It's a lot to unpack there, but I'll start by saying at various times in my career I thought about, do I want to go for the Supreme Court or the Court of Appeals? Not saying I would've gotten it, but listening to Anne just confirmed my decision never to go for the appellate courts because I wouldn't have been happy there. I like being in the emergency room, as she puts it, and I think that's a very apt description of the circuit court. Or in Wisconsin they're called circuit court judges, judges of general jurisdiction. It's a very good description of the kind of work we do. So I was on the bench for 26 years, most of that 26 years was in criminal, though I did serve in other parts of the system as well. And most of the criminal work was either in our homicide sexual assault courts or domestic violence courts, with a seven year stint as the Chief Judge for Milwaukee County.

So I think, while I really appreciate and thought very hard about the question you asked about how did those experiences inform who I am and how I view these kinds of issues. I mean, I think if you are aware of who you are and how you fit in any particular system, then every interaction you have with a defendant, a victim, a prosecutor, a defense attorney, another judge, an administrator, the public, every one of those should inform you and leave some kind of mark on the lens that you use through which you view whatever the situation is in front of you. And what I appreciate about my experience is that I served in many different roles within the court system and as chief judge and working with the state court administration had a role to play in reforming court processes and then going out and training on them.

And I got the opportunity through the National Council to do training on domestic violence, and through CCI to do training on procedural fairness, and all of those experiences, they were way more than my expressing my limited understanding of whatever the issue was. It was more about my learning from everybody I worked with or everybody that we were working with to teach. So I put all of those experiences together and I think that has allowed me to have the kind of background to, perhaps, impart some additional experience and knowledge to people coming after me. And while I've retired from the day to day work in the emergency room, I'm still doing a lot of training and consulting, both within the state and nationally. So hope that answers your question.

POLKEY: Absolutely. No, thank you, Judge. And I do appreciate your note of self-awareness. Whether we are aware of it or not, we do bring our whole selves and our personality and our experiences to the interactions that we have. And I think that it has to be named sometimes, because in our line of work, sometimes when the adversarial context or in the uber professional context, we may deny ourselves the reality that you spoke of which, it's unavoidable that you aren't who you are when you're interacting with each other in this environment, like any other environment. So I appreciate that.

So the fact of the matter, Danielle, is that no judge can do their role if there aren't people like you out there who've worked in court administration, who've worked in nonprofit advocacy from a training and technical assistance perspective. You have worked with so many judges in so many different contexts, so we love to hear from you as to the range of your experiences in your role as a non judge who works with judges. Or probably has just as much, if not more experience, than judges on some topics. Also, how your personal experiences, your background, has influenced how you've interacted with judges and court staff in various environments where you have.

PUGH: Sure, thanks. Well, I should start by saying that, of the 17 plus years that I've worked in this field, providing technical assistance and training to judges and courts communities, or working at the state level at the Administrative Office of the Courts, I am not well trained. So a lot of people are surprised by that. And I think that helped me professionally provide training and technical assistance to judges and court staff. And I say that because my early professional career, I started at the National Council of Junior Family Court Judges after coming from Europe, the World Health Organization. And I was fortunate enough to come into a role where I was with a great group of judges from all over the country who wanted to work on the issues of intimate partner violence in its various contexts. And they were emphatic about calling them by their first names.

 And I say that as simple, but I never had that error or that stress or that concern about, oh, I need to call you Judge or Your Honor when I'm sitting at a table trying to figure out how best to do this education module that we're going to go live in this city. And then it really helped us come together and work on really troubling, controversial, sometimes sticky issues with the judiciary. And really come and bring our best selves to each other and not worry about hierarchy. And I think, when you're in a safe space that is cultivated through everybody and that runs through everyone, you really can get out of the similar mode of thinking and try to really tackle some of these really difficult issues. So I think that has helped me professionally really do my job, and I think really helped judges and court staff enhance their service to the public.

POLKEY: Thanks, Danielle. And as someone who is law trained you may have seen, it took me about two years to be able to not refer to the judges that we work with as Your Honor, and I'm still struggling with that. But you make a good point that that level of comfort, particularly on the challenging topics that we work together on, is key to making sure that we're thinking about all the people that we're there to serve and we're not bound by hierarchies or platitudes. So let's dive in, and I'm actually going to go back to you, Danielle, with this question. The reason why we are all connected with each other is because of our work together on the National Judicial Institute on Domestic Violence where, through your work that you referenced with the National Council and Juvenile Family Court Judges, Danielle, and my work at Futures Without Violence, work that certainly predated our involvement with those organizations.

We put together seminars, three day seminars, where Judge Kremers is a long serving faculty member, and Justice McKeig's been involved too, to train judges in particular on issues of domestic violence as it presents itself in the various ways in courtrooms. And that's why we're really focusing on intimate partner violence as the complex topic that is subject to our conversation today. And then the complex audience being court staff and court judges. So Danielle, from your point of view of someone who's been so engaged in training both staff and judges, when it comes to educating them about intimate partner violence, what makes these particular audiences particularly unique from your point of view?

PUGH: That's a hard question, and I have to think about this a lot lately, because it's so easy for me now to just approach this group. But when we look at other topics, like drugs, substance use disorders, or driving while impaired or what have you, it doesn't seem to have as much resistance as opposed to when we're talking about intimate partner violence. And I really started to think about what is it that people fear about addressing this issue? What is the shame? The stigma that we have as a society to address this issue? And how does it fall upon the judiciary? What does it mean for the judiciary? And we think about what the role of the court's neutrality, we have an adversarial approach. The history, the structure of the judiciary, it really does conflict with how we're trying to address the intimate partner violence and trying to ameliorate these social ills. So I think one of those topics is just, one, an issue of where judges sit in terms of their role and how they see themselves. And that protection, which it can also be a wall. I think that's one of the issues.

And I think when you talk about court staff and their public service role, you always hear this thing about neutrality. Well, I don't seem neutral. And we're really trying to say, what does that mean in this context? And sometimes I wonder, I'm starting to wonder after almost two decades, if it's really around our own deep-rooted misunderstanding, reluctance to talk about how terribly wrong we got healthy relationships. Even in adulthood. And where does that fall in our work? I think that's another issue. And I also think what's so difficult for court staff, I think court staff are maybe even more difficult than judges nowadays. I think it's because they're hardened by so many different emotions that are coming at them at the court. They're the gatekeepers, the first line. I think they're also overlooked often, in terms of how we need to approach court staff and their education and their needs. But by time we get to court staff, we have to undo a lot of harm and pain and frustration. And that is shrouded by these protective layers that they have.

POLKEY: Fascinating. Jeff, Judge Kremers, you've been in front of thousands of judges in an educational setting. And you heard Danielle mention all of the other types of cases that judges might encounter, drunk driving cases or the things to that effect, and the hardened court staff official. And then also we both have been in rooms when we've had judges just demand, "Just tell us what to do. We don't really need all this extra stuff, just tell us what to do." From your point of view, Jeff, why is it important to focus on intimate partner violence as its own training subset for the benefit of judges and court staff?

KREMERS: Well, I think the reason for that is that these crimes, these accusations, these situations, are unlike any other kind of crime that courts see. Almost all other crimes are one offs. I mean, you can have a serial robber and all that jazz, but the crime itself is a one off thing. It usually happens over a very brief period of time and everybody's against it. I mean, you won't find a judge who's in favor of murder or armed robbery, there aren't all of the other dynamics that take place in intimate person violence cases that we see, so there's that. And then you have all of the stuff that those individual judges or court staff bring to the discussion. They have all had experience with intimate personal relationships, not all violent of course, but they bring that knowledge, or what they think is knowledge or their observations about the way people interact with each other, to the discussion.

And so then when they hear someone say, "Oh, she's making it up because she wants to get a leg up in the divorce," or, "She's exaggerating, she's trying to alienate the kids from me," all of those kinds of things that we deal with get filtered through the lens that those individuals bring to the discussion. Some good, some bad. And of course, then, we have their professional backgrounds before they became judges or court staff that interact on this. And then we have all the myths about the way victims react or don't react or should react that we're dealing with. And then of course, there's the black robe disease that judges think once they get that robe on, they suddenly know everything about everything and you can't tell them. And if you try and tell them, then you're trying to poison the well, as it were. Or force them into an outcome determinative rationale or perspective on these cases.

So it's just a combination of all of those things that makes the training more difficult than if you were up there teaching them about alcoholism as a disease and how it leads to drunk drivers and homicides by intoxicated use. And then of course, the last piece I would throw into this, and it's not a small one, is that I don't care what kind of judge you are or where you sit, domestic violence or intimate partner violence is going to show up on your docket. I don't care if you're in family court, children's court, civil, and of course criminal. It's everywhere you look. And so if you're not well versed on the dynamics of what's going on in front of you, you can't possibly hear the stories of the people in front of you and react appropriately. Not just judicially appropriate, but also in your mannerisms, your intonation, and therefore also set an example for your staff and demand certain behaviors from your staff as well to those cases. So it's kind of a long involved answer to what should be a simple question, but I don't think it is.

POLKEY: It's that issue, it has unique dynamics and a unique education protocol to approach it. And so let's talk, Justice McKeig, about some of the items that both Danielle and Jeff brought up with respect to bias. It's not a criticism that judges and court staff would be occupied by notions of fairness and eliminating bias from their adjudications of these types of unique cases. It's right, that's the way that we should proceed with all of our functions in this environment, in this community of trying to find our way to the truth.

However, we also have to balance that with some of the aspects of intimate partner violence, victim and perpetrator decision making and trauma, and how people communicate what's happened. And what Jeff mentioned with respect to how intimate partner violence might present itself in cases that aren't about intimate partner violence. So now I'm going to go ahead to a two part question, both for you and Jeff, why do concerns about bias come up so frequently in intimate partner violence context? And what do you do to mitigate those concerns when you are facilitating in front of judges and court staff while honoring the principles of neutrality that are so key to judicial decision making?

MCKEIG: Well, I think that, a couple of things. One is that, I think it's an area where people feel like it's a little bit too touchy feely. I likened it to the time when I was still a lawyer and appearing in juvenile court, and I would learn of a judge that was going to be transferred from criminal court and they were going to be coming down to juvenile court. And I would know that the reputation of that judge was that they were just this high quality judge and I was really excited about their arrival. And, unfortunately, every once in a while it would be that this person, I think it's their personal and their life philosophy or what have you, comes out in a really strange way. And it was in a way where they may have been a very great judge, productive, efficient in having the ability to apply the criminal law in that manner, it's just a whole different world. So I think acknowledging that upfront. And then also understanding, when we are training judges, that sometimes people have to recognize that not every assignment is for them.

Certainly, when I became presiding judge of our family court, there were some judges who, I knew that their philosophy, which was pretty rigid and was not going to change, was not going to work when we were addressing intimate partner violence on our domestic violence calendars. And so, you make some unpopular decisions about, they're not going to hear those cases. And that's not easy, but I think it's incredibly important, and if we're really going to be serving the public rather than serving the individual ego of the judicial officer, then those calls have to be made. And I'm not saying that that's simple, I'm not saying that that's easy, but I do think that there are times where it's required. And I can certainly remember several conversations where court staff or court leaders brought up, "Well, you have to be neutral." And it's like, well, I'm neutral until I hear the information, but then what? I mean, if someone is taking part or is advocating violence against their partner, I'm not going to be neutral when I'm issuing my decision.

Because I've listened to the information, I've made a decision, and then I'm moving forward. So I was not one who was ever perhaps so concerned about the neutrality piece, just because I think the work is so incredibly important. And I think that probably some of that is shaped just by my growing up. On the reservation, one in three women experience sexual assault or physical violence in their lifetime. It was around me. And some people sat back and did nothing, but that was not how I was raised. I was raised that, as a community member, it was my obligation to step in and help. And maybe that shapes my philosophy on it, but I do think you just have to recognize what's different about this area of law, and then what do they mean ...Just like Danielle said, what do they mean by neutrality? It doesn't mean that you don't make decisions that are based on the evidence that's brought before you, but it also doesn't mean that you just throw your common sense and put that to the side.

KREMERS: Aaron, could I also respond on a different aspect of the use of the word bias? Because I think Anne talked about the idea that, oh, if we're training you about intimate partner violence, we're trying to get you to specific outcome, when really all we're trying to do is educate you about it. But the other kind of bias that I think we have to acknowledge and deal with is this notion of implicit bias where a lot of people, well, everybody, has some kind of implicit bias at work when they hear some information and react to it. It's just, the skill is being able to identify when that is kicking in for you and when it's affecting your decisions, especially for those as a judge. Now, in today's environment, usually when we talk about implicit bias we're talking about racial bias.

It also means gender and it means socioeconomic and it means cultural bias and just the way judges react to people coming into their courtroom from a variety of perspectives. And so they need to be able to understand ... Sujata Warrier does a terrific job of that in the piece that we inform them on in the institutes about cultural bias and cultural understanding and the kind of assumptions and stereotypes that we draw or create about people. And so I think it's really important that we train on that, because judges need to be able to recognize their biases. But you can't walk into a room full of judges or court staff or anyone for that matter and say, "You all have a bunch of implicit biases and we're going to teach those out of you today."

What you need to do is, instead, go at it from a totally different perspective and say, "Here are the dynamics of what's going on in front of you, and here are some things to think about, and let's talk about that." And through that kind of a presentation, you are able to draw out people's conclusions or assumptions that they make about what's going on. And if you can educate them about ... dispel some of the myths and some of the stereotypes, then they come out of the training saying, "Well, I used to think this way about this situation, but now I see that there's another way to analyze and perceive that story that's being played out in my courtroom in front of me." And so I think that idea of bias is another aspect that we really need to stay tuned into.

POLKEY: Well, thank you. And thank you for distinguishing between bias from a impartiality perspective and bias from the implicit bias perspective, because that misunderstanding gets conflated and it's confusing. And Anne, I wanted to also thank you for mentioning and let you know that we heard you when you mentioned the severely disproportionate rates of intimate partner violence that Native American populations face, your community faces. And we've definitely got a lot more work to do in that regard.

So we've laid a great foundation on the nuances of intimate partner violence, the unique nature of audiences comprised of judges and court staff, and all of the great experiences that you all bring to the table. So let's lean into the facilitating part of this podcast title. Many of the sites that you all work with over at CCI, Danielle, have challenges. Particularly in engaging judges and engaging court staff. And we talked about why those challenges exist, but can you tell us a little bit more about what you've heard from the sites about why those challenges exist? And then, what would you tell those individuals who may feel challenged on how they can better engage these groups as facilitators?

PUGH: Sure. I think one of the largest challenges around facilitating judges or working with judges or court staff is the art of collaboration and the art of coming to when there is such high stakes on the line. Usually there's something horrible that happened in the community or there are consistent barriers or challenges that are happening in intimate partner violence cases that it's coming to a head. And so there is a stated need. Oftentimes the receiver, the court or the court staff, realize that there might be some kind of problem or element, but the approach seems to be less thought through. The strategy, how to get people to collaborate, and what does this even mean?

So we've started to talk a lot about what does even collaboration mean to you? And it means a lot of things coming to the table. And the challenge is around strategy. Often people already know what information needs to be imparted on judges or court staff, and it's not a collaborative process in terms of creating some kind of training or education module that will actually speak to their lived lives on the bench or in the courthouse. So I think, really, there could be some kernel there that is worthy of collaboration and getting to the right audience and getting to the audience, I should say. But the execution is often what needs to be refined. And finally, I think sometimes it takes time. It takes time to build trust. There's anger, there's frustration, there's us versus them, there is a feeling of being attacked because these are stressful times and these are stressful cases.

And we don't take the time to really think thoughtfully and thoroughly about how we're going to do this education, how we're going to measure the impact of our education, what does it look like for us as a community? What does this look like if a judge did this differently? And can they even do that differently? So what does it look like if we focus on court staff first? Those conversations aren't as frequent as, "Can you come and talk to me about risk?" Why does that matter to you? If I came to talk to you about risk, how would that change? And so I think those are some of the issues or challenges in terms of facilitating conversations and facilitating collaboration and facilitating the material.

POLKEY: Thank you. Jeff, you or Anne jump in. How would you better facilitate the groups that Danielle described?

KREMERS: So I agree with everything Danielle said, of course, as I always do. But when we go into train in various jurisdictions, one of the precipitating factors is often some event that happened, as Danielle mentioned. And the problem that I have seen over the years is, while anecdotes or individual cases make for great sound bites and great TV news clips, they rarely make for good public policy. And so you have to get people to understand and address the question, what is it that they're trying to change and what is that change based on? And what will it look like when the change is effectuated? And there's a great book by Michael Lewis called The Undoing Project that talks about the heuristics that people, professionals especially use, in making global decisions. And judges are particularly bad at using a few anecdotes in their experience to drive what they do on the next case in front of them.

And they think they know it, and we've seen this in the institutes where we ask them, "What percentage of women in domestic violence cases do you think lie?" And their answers don't track with the data, they track with some case that they can remember. Or a few cases. But they lose the context of the hundreds of cases where it didn't happen that way, because the unusual sticks out and that's the whole point of this book. So I think we really have to focus on the data that they need and then using that data, real data, help them see what the reality in their community is on that particular issue. Coupled with education about the dynamics of the people appearing in front of them. And then you throw in a good dose of trauma informed care and trauma informed judging, and sprinkle in some procedural fairness doctrines and perspectives, and I think then you have a pretty good recipe for how to really create change in how a system responds to intimate partner violence in a particular community.

MCKEIG: And the only other thing that I would add is that I think that when you use the different modalities, the teaching process, that that really helps. Because everybody hears things or learns things differently. And for example, the comings and goings where you've got the judges in silence and really trying to hone into experiencing that as though you were the person who was the survivor of the intimate partner violence. It's interesting how I have seen so many of my colleagues who, it has transformed their thinking in a way where other modalities of teaching or training perhaps had not. So I think when you mix that all up, you are able to reach judges in a way that's different than perhaps the way that we have been educated or trained the majority of our career.

POLKEY: Thank you. We're going to ask you to tell us a little bit about your toughest experience you've had with audience of judges and/or an audience of court staff. So who wants to go first?

PUGH: They blurred together, actually. It's really hard when you're facilitating or leading from behind when you have been attacked or your colleagues have been attacked. Or you're seeing judges attack a particular faculty member because of something about them, whether it's their race or gender identity or what have you, and those are difficult to handle. I think sometimes it's more difficult when you're managing that training than when you are the facilitator yourself, because there's a balance of the faculty team work on how to manage without alienating this person, but not allowing this behavior to continue in this setting. And then you, trying to manage from behind, behind being the back of the room and trying to queue up the next faculty or pull aside the person or what have you.

And so I think those are a lot of the preparations of, okay, so should this happen? How are we going to handle this from the front of the room? From the back of the room? In all areas? But I have been in rooms where I realize that I am the only woman or the only woman of color, or both, in a room where I'm trying to facilitate. And I'm starting to get these jabs. And they're subtle jabs. And sometimes I think the subtle jab are some of the hardest ones. Then I start to feel that this is a losing proposition and I want to leave the situation, but I stick with it because I am truly invested and I do think we can get people seeing that there is a possibility to do better and to do right on these types of cases.

POLKEY: Yeah, and thank you, Danielle, for mentioning the, preparing for what might happen in advance with your colleagues. One of the things that I definitely try to prepare for are, what are the things that trigger me the most? What space? If someone were to invade these certain topics or approaches, and I already know I'm going to get angry if it happens, oftentimes I try to allow myself to get a little angry or prepared in advance, so that by the time, if it were to happen in front of the room, I'm at least a little bit inoculated for that immediate challenging ... or reactions you might have to that challenging statement. That notion of anticipating triggers.

So that's a bit of advice that I would put into the discussion here. And as we begin to wrap up our conversation today about facilitating complex topics with complex audiences, I wanted to see if you all had any final big pieces of advice that you would offer our listeners who may be worried or nervous about engaging with the ever so intimidating groups of judges and court staff that we've described with love here today. So any final words of advice from our guests today?

PUGH: I've noticed, with judges, and I've, again, have been very fortunate to work closely alongside many judges and develop relationships with them. But as well not develop relationships and come see them every couple years. And I think really understanding some of the anxieties and pressures that they have on them, that really, majority of them really want to do right, they just struggle with this topic. And being a little bit more tender with my approach in terms of getting them to the next stage.

So I'm not looking to go from A to Z, or A to F when I'm doing some project in the community. I'm like, so where can we get you to C? A to C? Let's see what's realistic here. And then also providing that safe space is really critical. I think finding common ground when I'm trying to get communities to talk with each other, finding some common ground everyone can really have some incentive, that they can say they want, to have something better in their community, and trying to be open to hearing some of their struggles. Even though it might be the same you hear in another town over.

KREMERS: Yeah, I think listening is a really important and difficult skill to master, but it's so critical. Just like we're telling them to listen to the stories that are in front of them and how they listen to victims, we need to do the same as facilitators, to listen what's really going on with them. What are the pressures that they're facing from their administrators? Their colleagues? Their community? And where can we meet them where they're at? As Danielle said, move them just as far as we can get them to move. And in that vein, I think it's critical to also talk to them about taking care of themselves so it's not just a learning experience about intimate partner violence, but also what kind of strategies are they using to protect themselves from the real harm that could come from listening to these kinds of cases day in and day out? And fighting the fight in the community to get these courts up and running? Or to maintain or to change how they are processing the cases, whatever it is. So those would be the two points I would focus on, I guess.

MCKEIG: Yeah, the only other thing that I'll throw out there is that I always like to be able to say or do something that leaves the people who have come inspired. Because I think we all want to be inspired to do better or to do different or to improve. And I think that building in some passion and inspiration can really motivate people to go back to where they came from and just have, perhaps, a moment of reset and trying to do a better job.

POLKEY: Well, thank you all so much for an enlightening conversation. We covered a lot of ground. We really appreciate your insight, so I want to thank you Justice McKeig, thank you Judge Kremers, and thank you Danielle. I'll go back around and say thank you, Anne, thank you Jeff, and thank you Danielle. Thank you for joining us for Facilitating Complex Topics With Complex Audiences. This series will continue with two additional podcasts on Preparing for Challenging and Courageous Conversations and Facilitations, Challenges in Intimate Partner Violence, Education, and Programming. I'm your host for today, Aaron PoLKEY.