A major motivation in the modern dispute resolution movement has been to increase and improve parties’ decision-making in their legal disputes. Historically, parties often had little opportunity to exercise much control after they retained attorneys to handle their disputes. Attorneys often acted paternalistically, taking control over virtually every aspect of the cases. The legal system … Continue reading Focus on Party Decision-Making
This post is prompted by an article by Washington Post columnist Paul Waldman, We’re Still Asking the Wrong Question about Biden and Ukraine. He writes: For once, can we confront a foreign policy challenge without obsession over whether the president is being “weak” or “strong”? … In any foreign policy challenge, understanding what goes into … Continue reading Which is Better: To Be Strong or Smart?
Jim Stark and Doug Frenkel just became scholars-in-residence with the International Academy of Mediators, following in the footsteps of Hal Abramson, Lela Love, and Dwight Golann. I have appreciated Doug and Jim’s work – actually of all the SiRs – and this post describes some of the things I appreciate about it. It also includes … Continue reading Appreciation of Doug Frenkel and Jim Stark
Everyone knows that lawyers should carefully assess their cases at the earliest appropriate time. In cases that are or might be litigated, lawyers often focus primarily or exclusively on estimating the expected court outcome (aka the BATNA value). The LIRA book provides guidance for more thorough and systematic case assessments, including values for tangible costs … Continue reading LIRA Videos Out the Wazoo!!
The LIRA book – Litigation Interest and Risk Assessment: Help Your Clients Make Good Litigation Decisions – focuses on civil litigation. It describes three elements that practitioners and parties should consider when assessing litigation interests and risks: (1) the expected court outcome, (2) future tangible costs of continuing to litigate, and (3) future intangible costs … Continue reading LIRA in Criminal Cases
The good folks at the Association for Conflict Resolution of Greater New York and CUNY Dispute Resolution Center at John Jay College invited me to give a talk as part of their monthly breakfast series. Last week, I gave a presentation, Helping Parties Make Decisions About What’s Really Important, which synthesizes ideas I have been … Continue reading Concepts That Can Help Practitioners Help Parties Make Decisions in Disputes
I continue to produce videos related to the LIRA book, which you might be interested in, possibly for use in courses. As I produce more videos, I add them to the full collection in this post, which you might want to bookmark. Here are the latest videos: Mediating with LIRA. Mediate.com University. $49. August 2020. … Continue reading Gadzooks! Even More LIRA Videos! And Coming Attractions!
By definition, the LIRA book, which provides a framework for litigation interest and risk assessment, focuses on litigation. This post describes how it can be adapted for transactional negotiation – transaction interest and risk assessment, or TIRA. Three Elements The LIRA framework consists of assessment of three elements: expected court outcome, future tangible costs of … Continue reading Transactional Interest and Risk Assessment
Jeff Trueman, an experienced Maryland mediator and Pepperdine LLM candidate, wrote an excellent article about the challenges of lawyers, mediators, and insurance claims professionals in mediation. He interviewed subjects about their problems in mediation, and his study provided evidence of professionals behaving badly, very consistent with my post about BATNAs and the emotional pains of … Continue reading Jeff Trueman’s Study on Nightmares of “Positional” Tactics in Mediation
I have had some wonderful conversations in my LIRA book tour and made videos of some of them. Considering the challenges of synchronous instruction these days, faculty may want to assign some of these videos as asynchronous “guest lectures” and/or make-up assignments if students or faculty have to miss some classes. Here’s a list of … Continue reading More LIRA Videos
