From my dear colleague and FOI, Professor Nancy Welsh, Director of the Dispute Resolution Program at Texas A&M:

Texas A&M Law’s Dispute Resolution Program is very pleased to invite you to our annual symposium: Shining a Light on Dispute Resolution: Transparency, Metrics and Empirical Research. It will be held on Friday, November 16, 2018, with panels focusing on:

• Mediation and online dispute resolution (ODR) in the courts
• Plea bargaining, and
• Diversity/inclusivity among neutrals

Our keynote will be presented by Tom Stipanowich, William H. Webster Chair in Dispute Resolution at Pepperdine University School of Law and Dean of the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution. As you know, Tom is in residence at Texas A&M this semester as a Hagler Institute Faculty Fellow.

Confirmed presenters include:
• Pat Chew (University of Pittsburgh)
• Sarah Cole (Ohio State University)
• Ben Davis (University of Toledo)
• Paula Hannaford-Agor (National Center for State Courts)
• Pamela Metzger (SMU)
• JJ Prescott (University of Michigan)
• Erika Rickard (Pew Charitable Trusts)
• Andrea Schneider (Marquette University)
• Donna Shestowsky (UC-Davis)
• Donna Stienstra (Federal Judicial Center)
• Maria Volpe (John Jay College-CUNY)
• Ron Wright (Wake Forest University)

Texas A&M Law’s Program in Law and Social Science is also co-sponsoring the symposium. We hope you can attend, as we consider the need for and challenges of transparency, metrics and empirical research in these areas. For additional details and registration, see: law.tamu.edu/DR-Symposium2018.