Summarizing Bill Drake’s career is a task poorly suited for a blog post. He was a pioneer in creating integrated approaches to conflict and dispute systems, with a particular focus early in his career on city-level initiatives. He helped to run NIDR early on. He advised ACCORD. He ran the Western Justice Center Foundation. And … Continue reading Bill Drake (1944 – 2018): The Passing of an ADR Pioneer
Announcement yesterday from Harvard Law School that Rachel Viscomi has been appointed as an assistant clinical professor of law. She will also direct Harvard’s Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program. Full press release at (https://today.law.harvard.edu/rachel-viscomi-named-assistant-clinical-professor-law/). Rachel’s energy is hard to capture in a blog post, but I suspect that anyone reading this doesn’t need for me … Continue reading Rachel Viscomi, Harvard Assistant Clinical Professor
From this morning’s Inside Higher Education: A group of top law schools on Monday released the results of a survey of workplace harassment policies at law firms recruiting on their campuses. Those law schools asked the firms last month to respond to questions about mandatory arbitration agreements and other policies dealing with workplace harassment. Student … Continue reading Law Firm Arbitration Clauses for Summer Associates
An interesting blog post from CBI (Consensus Building Institute) about joint fact finding processes in science-heavy public policy contexts. Per Pat Field: The traditional ways of generating information in stovepipes – via the academy, industry, government, or NGOs – are not meeting the three-pronged test of useable science and technical studies: credible, legitimate, and salient. … Continue reading Joint Fact Finding
Frank Sander died yesterday. There is a silly exercise in some arenas (athletics, arts, academe, etc.) in which one is called upon to declare who would be on “The Mount Rushmore of…” whatever is being discussed. Every conceivable, credible construction of the Mount Rushmore of our field would include Frank. Prominently. In whichever pose he … Continue reading Frank Sander 1927-2018
Great article this morning from the National Law Journal, with someone misleading title: “Judge Orders Opioid Lawyers to Come Up With a Settlement Plan.” Available here and text excerpt below. As one who grew up, clerked in northern Ohio, and still names as “hometown” one of the (many) places hard hit by this crisis, I am … Continue reading Opioid Litigation & Judicial Role in Settlement
The National Law Journal reported yesterday on SettlementAnalytics and their predictive algorithms. “The world’s first quantitative legal measurement to indicate the likelihood of a lawsuit proceeding all the way to trial and adjudication” according to the company. I am profoundly skeptical. Or perhaps more accurately, I can easily imagine distortions (or worse) masquerading as mathematical … Continue reading AI and Predicting Settlement
Former President of the American Arbitration Association. From the obituary in the Greenwich Time: Robert Coulson, an international leader in the field of arbitration and dispute resolution, died on September 9, 2017, in Stamford Hospital, Connecticut, following a stroke. He was 93 and lived in Riverside for 40 years. He was president and CEO of … Continue reading Robert Coulson (1924-2017)
From some of the very, very talented people at Consensus Building Institute. Including an e-conversation starting September 8. Details at http://www.climigration.org/. Super impressive. Super timely. Super important. Even if just for three minutes over coffee, skim this website. Today. MM
The California Law Revision Commission has issued a tentative recommendation regarding mediation confidentiality, with a particular focus on the circumstance in which there is alleged misconduct during the course of a mediation (and evidence from the mediation is sought in a subsequent suit). [http://www.clrc.ca.gov/K402.html] At 158 pages, the report is thorough, and in many places, … Continue reading California Law Revision Commission on Mediation Confidentiality
