The Art of Negotiation Part 2

Frank C. Laney was Circuit Mediator for the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit for 25 years, mediating more than 5000 cases before retiring in April 2022.  After serving as an ex-officio member of the NC Dispute Resolution Commission since its inception in 1995, he was appointed as a Commissioner in 2021. He teaches the NC Dispute Resolution Commission required training for mediator certification with North Carolina Center for Mediation. He has recently completed his book, The Practical Mediator, a collection of articles he has written about the field of mediation. He has been an adjunct professor at Campbell University and North Carolina Central University Schools of Law and is a Senior Lecturing Fellow at High Point University School of Law.

For the six years before Covid he taught mediation in Belarus and more recently in Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan, including one fall in Belarus as a visiting Fulbright Specialist.  

He is the former Mediation Coordinator for the NC Industrial Commission and for three years in the early 1990’s limited his private practice in Raleigh to mediation.  

He has been a member of the NC Bar Association Dispute Resolution Committee/Section since its inception and is a past Section Chair. He chaired the joint Section-Commission committee responsible for the 2012 updating and rewriting of Alternative Dispute Resolution in North Carolina, A New Civil Procedure, serving as an author and co-editor of the book. In 2004, the Section presented him with the Peace Award.  He was a consultant with the NC Bar Association’s Mediated Settlement Conference and District Court Arbitration Pilot Programs.  He helped lead the committees that developed the Family Financial Settlement and Clerk Mediation Programs and the committee that crafted the Standards of Professional Conduct for Mediators.  Mr. Laney is certified as a mediator in the Superior Court, Family Financial, District Criminal Court and Clerk Programs by the NC Dispute Resolution Commission and as a practitioner member of the Academy of Family Mediators.  

He was born in Charlotte and raised in North Carolina, spending his early childhood in Taylorsville, a small town in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, then attended Martin Middle School and Broughton High School in Raleigh.  Mr. Laney attended NC State University and UNC Law School.  His father was a county agricultural extension agent and owned farms in Alexander and Nash Counties, where Frank picked up rocks, cut trees, baled hay and built barbwire fences.

His wife, Anne Whaley Laney, is Principal Flutist with the North Carolina Symphony.  They have two children, William and Megan.  After graduating from UNC, William completed his master’s degree at NC State University and works for a women’s health organization.  Megan graduated UNC undergraduate and UNC School of Law.  She began as a staff attorney with the US Court of Appeals for the 11^th Circuit in Atlanta in the fall of 2023.

In his free time Mr. Laney works with the Boy Scout troop he was a member of as a boy and where his son got his Eagle.  He is Past President of the Green Hope Band Boosters, and most years sings with the North Carolina Master Chorale, which gives him the opportunity to sing with his wife and the North Carolina Symphony.  He serves on the vestry of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cary.