Professor Ben DePoorter recently published an article, “Law in the Shadow of Bargaining: The Feedback Effect of Civil Settlements”, 95 Cornell L. Rev. 957 (2010), (essay pdf here) exploring the implications of selective disclosure or selective availability of private settlements.  Its abstract: Lawmakers, courts, and legal scholars often express concern that settlement agreements withhold important … Continue reading “Did You Hear About The Settlement Where…?” →

Recently posted to SSRN: an article describing a study of lawyers’ prediction about litigation.  It turns out that lawyers are overconfident in their assessments about the likelihood of success.  This result should surprise every person who has never met a lawyer. The study also found that lawyers don’t improve with experience on this measure, and … Continue reading “Lawyers Are Overconfident” and other shocking discoveries →

The Fourth Annual ADR Works-in-progress conference will take place at the University of Oregon October 15-16, 2010.  The conference website (http://www.adr.uoregon.edu/2010WIPconference/) provides great information, and there’s an online registration form available on that site.  I hope we see lots of you there! Professor Jen Reynolds will be taking the lead on the conference organization, and … Continue reading ADR Works In Progress: Oregon, October 15-16, 2010 →

The folks at Mediation Works Incorporated (MWI) maintain a really helpful set of materials about bankruptcy mediation, including a regularly-issued Bankruptcy Mediation newsletter. Bankruptcy has never been my field of mediation practice, but it makes great sense that we’re seeing a rise of bankruptcy mediation activities here and in Europe. I suspect there are other … Continue reading Mediating Bankruptcy Cases →

From Jean Sternlight: Yesterday the Supreme Court granted certiorari in what could be an extremely important case addressing the intersection of mandatory arbitration and class actions.  AT & T Mobility v. Concepcion, 2010 WL 303962, Docked 09-893 (May 24, 2010) poses the following question:  “Whether the Federal Arbitration Act preempts States from conditioning the enforcement … Continue reading Cert granted in AT & T Mobility v. Concepcion →

From Jean Sternlight: I write to encourage you to have your students submit their good papers to the ABA Dispute Resolution Section Boskey Writing Competition.  Named after James Boskey, a long-time leader in our field, the competition is open to all full and part-time J.D. students.  To be eligible papers should address an aspect of … Continue reading Boskey Competition – Call for Papers and Judges →

Yesterday, my Judge died. Ann Aldrich, the federal judge for whom I clerked when I got out of law school, was a Carter appointee.  She was one of the first women to graduate from NYU’s law school.  As a practitioner, she argued the United Church of Christ v FCC civil rights case that expanded the … Continue reading My Judge →

Deborah Jones Merritt (Ohio State) has recently posted her article “Pedagogy, Progress, and Portfolios” to SSRN (link here).  She presents thorough and intriguing visions of “Professional Learning Portfolios.”  One piece of her article describes the implications for those of us who teach ADR, although frankly, I think the ideas have at least as much relevance … Continue reading Professional Learning Portfolios in law schools →

The folks at the Werner Institute have launched adrhub.com, a portal focused on ADR.  I’ve spent a little time there, and I plan to check back often in the next few weeks to see how it develops.  Some of the materials and information it looks like they’re planning to make available would be great contributions. … Continue reading ADR portal “ADRhub” launched →

Geoff Sharp, a mediator from New Zealand, is the mind behind Mediator blah…blah.  I still have that blog site bookmarked, even though Geoff shut it down a long time ago.  It was one of the best, smartest, most insightful mediation sites around, in my opinion.  I miss it.  If you didn’t catch it the first … Continue reading Geoff Sharp is back in the ADR blogosphere →