The Association for Conflict Resolution of Greater New York and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in the City University of New York recently hosted an interesting breakfast roundtable featuring Gary Friedman, discussing his unfortunate tenure as a local elected government official. You may recall that this was the subject of a series of … Continue reading More on Gary Friedman’s Not-So-Excellent Adventure in Politics
People often say that dispute resolution processes aren’t “one size fits all.” When practitioners are asked to opine about hypothetical problems, they often say “it depends” and they make “case by case” decisions. They are telling the truth. Lawyers make complex decisions as negotiators, litigation advocates, and mediators based on a lot of factors, so … Continue reading Teaching Students to Think Like Practitioners
When President Trump was in office, I wrote a series of posts about his negotiation skills (or lack thereof) based on contemporary news accounts. Despite having Republican majorities in both houses of Congress for his first two years in office, he generally was unable to negotiate for enactment of his policy objectives, most notably to … Continue reading A Tale of Two Negotiators
The ABA Section of Dispute Resolution published three books this year that you, your colleagues, and your students might be interested in. Mediating Legal Disputes: Effective Techniques to Resolve Cases, Second Edition, by Dwight Golann. Psychology for Lawyers: Understanding the Human Factors in Negotiation, Litigation, and Decision Making, Second Edition, by Jennifer K. Robbennolt and … Continue reading Three New ABA Books Hot Off the Press!
I forgot to include two things in my list of readings and resources you might want to think about as you plan for the coming academic year. The Theory-of-Change Book, which can be downloaded for free, contains 63 bite-size think pieces, averaging less than 4 pages each, written by 59 contributors in the following sections: … Continue reading Two More Things
As an annual tradition, this is a reminder of some of my favorite things you might use in your courses as you gear up for next academic year. Here’s a link to the latest and greatest version of the “resource share” compiled by Sharon Press and Noam Ebner. Here’s a post suggesting how you can … Continue reading Readings and Resources for Teaching
The majority opinion in the Breslin case led me to write my piece, Courts Should Make Mediation Good Samaritans Not Frankensteins, which led the CPR Mediation Committee to sponsor a program, Consequences of Not Participating in Court Ordered Mediation: What Is Fair? I was one of the speakers, along with Lauren A. Jones, ADR Coordinator … Continue reading Charting a Middle Course for Court-Connected Mediation
Michael Lang and Peter Nicholson edited a book, Family Conflict During a Pandemic: Stories of Struggles and Hope. It is a collection of short contributions, including stories, essays, poetry and art work by 93 people from 17 countries including pieces in 9 languages. The pieces are organized in four sections: Authors explain how they and … Continue reading New Book on Family Conflict During a Pandemic
Like it or not, facilitative and evaluative mediation are part of the social reality of our field. Despite the fact that these models are misleading and provide counterproductive concepts to guide mediators’ behaviors and set parties’ expectations, they are inescapable. They are standard elements in texts, courses, trainings, and general discourse in our field. They … Continue reading Reconciling Allegedly Alternative Mediation Models by Using DIY Models
My colleague, Ilhyung Lee, the director of Missouri’s Center for the Study of Dispute Resolution, announced the initiation of an annual writing competition, co-sponsored by the National Academy of Arbitrators (NAA). With a generous grant from the NAA Research and Education Foundation, this initiative encourages research and scholarship in the labor and employment field. Beginning … Continue reading Journal of Dispute Resolution Writing Competition – August 15 Deadline
