NYSDRA has a story by Michael Steinberg on the how the new USA mediation-based TV show “Fairly Legal” came to be.

The WSJ’s health blog reports on a study conducted by Columbia’s Carol Liebman and others of medical malpractice mediations in New York City. To the surprise of no one who knows anything about mediation, the study finds the mediation works: it lowers the cost of litigation and can help to reduce medical errors, and that … Continue reading MedMal Mediation Works – But Where Are the Docs? →

Bishop Eddie Long is the pastor of an Atlanta megachurch and a prominent and controversial opponent of gay marriage. Earlier this fall, Long was accused by four young men of coercing them into sexual relationships with him. Their sexual misconduct lawsuit against him is scheduled to go to mediation in February, with a trial date … Continue reading Is Mediation an “End Run” Tantamount to Admission of Guilt? The Bishop Eddie Long Case →

St. John’s is seeking participants for a conference on international employment dispute resolution next summer at Cambridge University, Cambridge, England. The conference is called “Worlds of Work: Employment Dispute Resolution Systems Across the Globe,” and will be held on July 20-23, 2011. It is hosted by our Center for Labor & Employment Law in conjunction with … Continue reading Call for Participation: Cambridge 2011 →

Bill Henderson (Indiana Law) consistently produces top-quality empirical work on the legal academy and the legal profession. In a recent piece in the National Jurist, he describes research he and others have done into what makes a successful lawyer and predicts that the model in which increasingly large law firms hire exclusively from the top … Continue reading Bill Henderson on What Makes a Successful Lawyer →

The New York State Bar Association finds itself in the forefront of the debate over the expanding role of ADR this week after it decided to table a proposal that would require lawyers to notify their clients of mediation as an alternative to litigation. The proposal was supported by the Bar Association’s Dispute Resolution Section, … Continue reading NYSBA Proposal for Mandatory Mediation Notice—And Resistance to It →

In the 1970s, Lon Fuller initiated what became an extended scholarly conversation about the extent to which ADR can and should serve the public function of norm-creation that is such a central feature of adjudication. That topic remains a theme of recent ADR scholarship, appearing in the work of Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Susan Sturm, Amy Cohen, … Continue reading ADR and Norm-Creation →

Eizabeth Dunn (University of British Columbia), Dan Gilbert (Harvard), and Timothy Wilson (Virginia) have posted a study of money and happiness that, in addition to being just plain fascinating, may contain useful insights for our field. Some of the more interesting findings: People tend to be more happy when they are mentally focused on what … Continue reading Money and Happiness →

On Friday, the Carey Center for Dispute Resolution at St. John’s will host a program titled Reaching Acc[h]ord: Resolving Disputes over Music Downloading. The program will bring together several of the protagonists in the recent dramas over music downloading, including BU student Joel Tenenbaum (hit with a $600,000 judgment for illegal downloading—later reduced to $60,000) … Continue reading Resolving Disputes Over Music Downloading →

Many thanks to Michael Moffitt, Jane Gordon, and especially to Jen Reynolds for putting on a first-class ADR Works-in-Progress Conference this weekend. They were terrific hosts and the scholarly exchange was dynamic. I personally learned a great deal. I’m particularly grateful to Ran Kuttner for reading and commenting on my very rough draft of Leverage … Continue reading Kudos to Oregon for WIP Conference →