If so, take a look at this Model Mediation Course Syllabus With Teaching Notes – even if you are teaching a dispute resolution course other than mediation.

The model syllabus includes a menu of topics, readings, and simulations that can be incorporated in many DR courses.  It includes links to short readings for students that are available for free on the internet and can easily be included in any course.

 

In particular, it includes a unit about parties that is generally relevant in many courses.  Legal education generally treats parties as ghosts without interests other than winning in court and maximizing their partisan advantage.  Some DR courses do better, but there is room for improvement.

Parties have a wide range of interests that are mostly ignored in legal education and practice.  Litigation and other DR processes are very stressful, and parties often are extremely frustrated with their attorneys.  We should teach students about the many significant variations in parties and how practitioners should deal with them.

Research shows that recent law graduates generally are “woefully unprepared” to work with clients.  Law schools should devote substantial time in multiple courses explicitly teaching students about clients – but law schools generally don’t.  This is increasingly important because the NextGen bar exam and other licensing regimes include elements about working with clients.

 

The theory underlying the syllabus is outlined in Creating Educational Value by Teaching Law Students to be Quasi-Mediators.  Another term for “quasi-mediators” is “good lawyers.”  These lawyers look for opportunities to reach reasonable agreements whenever appropriate – and they vigorously advocate their clients’ interests if the other side continues to be unreasonable.

I recently conducted an educational program entitled “How Can You Turn Adversarial Attorneys into Quasi-Mediators?,” and I used the program like a focus group with experienced mediators.

Based on that program, I developed this two-page “cheat sheet” of things that mediators can do to promote attorneys’ cooperation as well as lists of dos and don’ts for attorneys to be quasi-mediators.  Your students should find this very helpful.

Take a look.

I present my findings from the program, including techniques for eliciting cooperation from attorneys, in my Theory Meets Practice column in next month’s issue of CPR’s Alternatives magazine.  Watch this space for a link to that piece.