Thursday, February 25, 2010

The blind is teaching the blind

A LA Calif law school is offering this course June 10-12, 2010 in Malibu:
Faculty: The Honorable Irwin Joseph and Dr. Donald Saposnek
**Approved for 16 hours of Continuing Education Units for Psychologists. Pepperdine University is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Pepperdine maintains responsibility for the program and its content.

This course is designed for judicial officers, family law facilitators, staff in self-help centers, custody investigators, and others working in or with the courts who wish to improve their skills in mediating family court matters. After an overview of mediation principles and techniques, participants will engage in assessing actual cases and learning practical information and a range of solutions available through mediating. Interspersed within discussion and role-plays will be critical child development information, essential information on the psychology and dynamics of divorce, and the ways in which high levels of conflict and emotions in family law cases present special problems, as well as unique opportunities for dispute resolution. ...

The Honorable Irwin Joseph recently completed four years in the Family Law Department in Santa Cruz County, hearing dissolution, custody, support, paternity and domestic violence matters.
Whatever Commissioner Joseph recommends, I'd suggest doing the opposite.

Just to give one example of how incompetent this guy is, two years ago he ordered my ex-wife and me to get a psychological evaluation. But for two years, he could not find a psychologist to do it. My ex-wife and I interviewed 50 psychologists, but none of them could make any sense out of his court order. We went back to Cmr. Joseph several times, and he was unable or unwilling to clarify his order. We eventually found a psychologist who had done hundreds of evaluations and was willing to do ours, but it still took a court motion and a teleconference with Cmr. Joseph to get it sufficiently clarified for him to start. And I still don't think that the psychologist understands what he is expected to do.

Cmr. Joseph seems to have no grasp at all of what the evaluators do. When asked the simplest questions, like whether the evaluation is supposed to be a psychological evaluation or a child custody evaluation, he appears to not even understand the question. He just says to read the boilerplate form where he has checked some checkboxes.

I hate to think what people might be learning from him in this short course. You would be much better off listening to Rod Blagojevich lecture on ethics.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ha! And that shrink is yet another leeching quack in the system, he shares and office with Berenge who was also in the family law conselling group there in the county building. Work for X number of years in the county system, then leave and go into the more lucrative and easier private practice world and have the judges send the clients under court order to see them. Sort of a parallel to being a politician in Washington for a few years, then leaving and going into the lobbying industry for big bucks.

Anonymous said...

Yep ! You'll find a bunch of them over at that water Street "prof" building.

Brett Johnson is there, too. They just take turns being the mediator or the psychologist, or the "evaluator", etc. referrring all the court odered folks to themselves for fees.

As, for the "continuing education"...Bret johnson teaches "night school" too.

Remember, you can find almost all of them in the yellow pages.

If they could get clients as therapists, attorneys, mediators, they would. Would you ever hire one of these guys, if not by an order or by default ?

Joseph knows what he's doing..he's convuluting matters as to prepetuate the whole scheme, which results in them profiting.

Anonymous said...

Agreed. Seems to me JJJ is "branding" himself as the counselor-friendly judge to differentiate himself from other contenders in getting a judgeship. Wonder why he's not running for the open judgeship in June? Well, it's a big state and he did go to school in SoCal. He's definitely workin' it, just like the candidates in this county's judgeship elections. Hey, one of them was even the youngest Eagle Scout ever in Alabama! No slam to either, but c'mon, like the old commercial tagline: where's the beef?

Unknown said...

OMG. Thanks for bringing this up. I know some people who will be interested to hear this. What the heck is he going to be teaching?? Let's Make A Deal??
The mind boggles at such a thought.

BusyHandz said...

After wasting 6 years in Santa Cruz and 4 more years in Solano County, after appearing before 8 different judges & Commissioners, three custody evals, I've decided that JJJ is typical and there is no hope. THE ENTIRE SYSTEM IS FUBAR. Tos them all out on their respective judicial ears.