The first episode of the Serial podcast’s new season is a dramatic illustration of how much you can learn from a single case. The case involves a young white woman who was prosecuted for her participation in a bar fight. The Serial team are incredible storytellers, so this podcast is not “just” educational, but it … Continue reading Serial Podcast Shows How Much You Can Learn From a Single Case
GFOI Donna Shestowsky (California-Davis) recently wrote the latest in a series of her studies asking actual litigants about their procedural preferences. The article is Inside the Mind of the Client: An Analysis of Litigants’ Decision Criteria for Choosing Procedures, 36 Conflict Resolution Quarterly 69 (2018). Here’s the abstract: This article presents findings from the … Continue reading What Do Litigants Really Want?
“[I]f . . . I act for the Big Bad Wolf against Little Red Riding Hood and I don’t want this dispute resolved, I want to tie it up as long as I possibly can, and mandatory mediation is custom made. I can waste more time, I can string it along, I can make sure … Continue reading A Good Bad-Faith Policy?
I love the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution annual conferences. They always put on a wide array of wonderful sessions and it’s a great time to connect with friends, old and new. As in the past, I am listing some sessions that particularly intrigue me. This reflects my idiosyncratic tastes and it would be a … Continue reading ABA Conference Sessions You Might Enjoy
Recently, I did a post about a new book that Forrest (“Woody”) Mosten co-authored about unbundled legal services. Woody just sent me a link to a podcast conversation he had with our friend, Dr. Julie Macfarlane, the director of the National Self-Represented Litigants Project (NSRLP). In this podcast, entitled “Back to the Future of Legal … Continue reading Conversation Between Julie Macfarlane and Woody Mosten about Unbundling and Self-Represented Litigants
Some questions for law professors: Why did you go to law school? Why did you decide to go into academia? What do you want to accomplish in your work? What do you hope for your students? In this post, I give my answers to these questions, which I think will resonate for many readers of … Continue reading Stone Soup, Reflective Practice, Action Research, and Social Justice
In June, Rafael Gely and I, the co-directors of the Stone Soup Project, decided to shift our approach from our original plan of a centralized database to a decentralized set of experimental efforts to produce knowledge about actual practice – aka letting a thousand chefs cook. I recently talked with many of the faculty who have … Continue reading Stone Soup: A Thousand Great Chefs
Recently, Susan Yates and I conducted mediation trainings on behalf of the United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire, the New Hampshire Judicial Branch Office of Mediation and Arbitration, and the University of New Hampshire, School of Law. As part of the trainings, we collected survey data and focus-group-like comments from the … Continue reading Stone Soup: Takeaways From New Hampshire Mediation Training
Recently, Susan Yates and I conducted mediation trainings on behalf of the United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire, the New Hampshire Judicial Branch Office of Mediation and Arbitration, and the University of New Hampshire, School of Law. As part of the trainings, we collected survey data and focus-group-like comments from the … Continue reading Stone Soup: Model for Gathering Data at Continuing Education Programs
As a girl scout at heart, I like to make new friends and keep the old ones. So I really enjoyed the AALS ADR Section Works-in-Progress Conference originated by Andrea Schneider and hosted this year at Arizona State under the able leadership of Art Hinshaw with assistance by Gabriel Velez and Roselle Wissler. It was … Continue reading What Is the Stone Soup(s) Project Really About?
The ABA Section of Dispute Resolution Task Force on Research on Mediator Techniques recently released an excellent report really worth reading. It should be of value to anyone interested in mediation. It also provides useful lessons about what we can learn about ADR from empirical research. Superstar ADR empirical researcher Roselle Wissler is the principal … Continue reading Lessons From the ABA’s Excellent Report on Mediator Techniques
From Resolution Systems Institute My name is Nicole Wilmet and I am the Resource Center Director at Resolution Systems Institute (RSI). As an organizer of your state’s court ADR program, I am delighted to inform you that RSI, the source for information about court alternative dispute resolution, has a brand new website! At the updated … Continue reading New Resolution Systems Institute (RSI) Website