Local attorney Anne Bachle Fifer is the recipient of the Nanci S. Klein Award from the State Bar of Michigan Alternative Dispute Resolution Section. She will be honored at an awards ceremony on Oct. 24 at Saint John’s Resort in Plymouth, along with other award winners Sheldon Stark, Zenell Brown, Zena Zumeta, Jennifer Grieco, and Nakisha Chaney.
Fifer’s commitment to community mediation predates Michigan’s 33-year-old Community Dispute Resolution Program (CDRP). This award recognizes her pivotal role in creating a solid local and statewide foundation for community mediation, and for nurturing that work through years of leadership in both administering programs as staff and as a volunteer, and providing training for many hundreds of people, including lawyers, who have gone on to serve as volunteer mediators and board members at CDRP centers.
A 1983 graduate from the University of Michigan Law School in 1983, Fifer is a licensed attorney practicing in Grand Rapids as a mediator, arbitrator, and mediation trainer.
Her mediation experience includes business contracts, workplace disputes in commercial, university, and non-profit settings, estates and other probate matters, employment discrimination, homebuyer/home-seller contracts, disputes in child protective cases, marriage and divorce, as well as church-based conflicts integrating Christian principles into the mediation process. She is an approved mediator listed on Kent County Circuit Court's general civil mediator roster. Her arbitration experience includes estates, homebuyer/home-seller disputes, and other commercial disputes.
Fifer has long been affiliated with Peacemaker Ministries, and sits on its Board of Directors. She has long provided training and casework for the Institute for Christian Conciliation, now a division of Ambassadors of Reconciliation. She was executive director of the Christian Conciliation Service of Central Michigan 1987-1995, and served on the board of directors of the Association of Christian Conciliation Services, forerunner of the Institute for Christian Conciliation of Peacemaker Ministries, 1989-1993.
She has lead 40-hour mediation training courses through Michigan's Institute of Continuing Legal Education and other organizations, as well as advanced mediation trainings throughout Michigan.
She is a frequent presenter at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's annual EXCEL Conference, and has conducted workshops for the Michigan Judicial Institute and other organizations. She teaches Christian peacemaking in businesses, churches, and educational institutions, and has taught courses in biblical principles of conflict resolution in churches for both youth and adults, and for Christian organizations around the U.S., in Mexico, Europe, Asia and Africa.
She is often appointed to state committees convened to improve ADR in Michigan, such as committees to revise the ADR Court Rules; to develop the court rule on confidentiality in mediation; and to produce Michigan's ground-breaking Standards of Conduct for Mediators.
She has taught as an adjunct professor of ADR at Cooley Law School in Lansing. She has been a guardian ad litem in child protective cases, and volunteers with Christian Legal Ministries, a program of Mel Trotter Ministries, an inner-city mission in Grand Rapids.
She is a member of the Christian Legal Society, the State Bar of Michigan and its ADR Section, and the Grand Rapids Bar Association and its ADR Section, as well as the State Bar's Character and Fitness Committee.
She has served on the State Bar ADR Section Council, Kent County Circuit Court's ADR Oversight Committee, and the boards of Urban Transformation Ministries and the Creston Neighborhood Association.
She has been a volunteer mediator in Michigan's Community Dispute Resolution Program since 1990, and served two terms on the board of the Dispute Resolution Center of West Michigan, including three years as board president.
Fifer received the Distinguished Service Award from the State Bar of Michigan's ADR Section in 2011 for her contributions to the field of ADR. She has been listed annually in “Best Lawyers in America” in the field of ADR since 2013.
She received the Neighbor of the Year Award in 2003 from the Creston Neighborhood Association.
She and her husband Mark live in Grand Rapids and are members of Berean Baptist Church.
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