Spotlight: Steve Groom
Mon, Aug 5th, 2024 | by Miles Mediation and Arbitration | Get to Know our Neutrals | Social Share
By Kelly K. James
Steve Groom started distance running when he was nine years old. He was a scholarship runner in college and has run 10 marathons. During the last 20 years, he swapped running for hiking and has hiked in the Grand Canyon 45 times. “When I was general counsel for Corrections Corporation of America (now CoreCivic), we had six prisons within an hour of Phoenix or Las Vegas,” he says. “I would schedule mediations around my hiking.”
Steve started practicing law in 1980, primarily doing trial work. He added mediations to the mix later that decade. “Tennessee hadn’t gotten into mediation yet, but when I was general counsel in the SunTrust Banks system in Florida, lawyers started asking me to help resolve disputes between their clients,” he says. “Mediation was starting to take hold in Florida in the late ’80s.” Steve found he really enjoyed helping parties resolve their disputes. He has mediated virtually every type of case, including personal injury, employment, franchise, medical negligence, civil rights, and a wide variety of business disputes.
While practicing law, Steve has served as general counsel to four public companies and one private, entrepreneurial company. He also practiced law with three different law firms. During his career, Steve has mediated more than 300 cases and been involved in another 2,000 as an advocate. In the mid-’90s, he was asked to serve on a committee for the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee to provide recommendations about introducing mediation to the court.
Steve also enjoys teaching; he has taught mediation and negotiation for over 30 years, including at Lipscomb University’s Institute for Conflict Management. He’s also a mediation coach for the institute’s Rule 31 mediator training.
Step by Step: Running, Hiking, and Family
But it’s not all about mediation. Steve is very proud of his family. Although Steve’s first wife died of cancer, they have two sons who are now grown with families of their own. Both of Steve’s “daughters” are from Brazil—Rio and São Paulo. Steve’s older son, who lives in Brazil, has three boys, seven, six, and three. Steve’s younger son, who lives in New York, has a seven-year-old daughter and a one-year-old boy. Steve is remarried to Natasha, a wonderful person who is also a great “Nana” to their grandkids.
Steve brings his natural endurance and drive to the cases he mediates, always working to try to get the parties to reach a resolution they can all agree on. “I really enjoy doing mediations,” he says. “Mediation is a way to help people resolve their disputes and get back to life — or get back to business.”
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