This was the question I had to answer when planning a lecture. I was a speaker in a course offered by the Universidad Monteavila in Caracas, Venezuela. My wonderful colleague, Rafael Gely, organized this collaboration with Missouri’s DR Center to provide a series of speakers, including me. My Venezuelan colleague told me that I could … Continue reading If You Had Only One Hour to Describe ADR, What Would You Say?
Dwight Golann just wrote a nice article about mediators’ experiences mediating on Zoom: “I Sometimes Catch Myself Looking Angry or Tired …” The Impact of Mediating by Zoom, published in CPR’s Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation. Dwight solicited mediators’ reactions on the International Academy of Mediators listserv as well as in two focus … Continue reading Dwight Golann on a Year of Zoom Mediations
Here’s a short article you might be interested in. Using a recent California appellate decision as a jumping off point, it identifies problems with mandatory mediation and recommends that courts use good dispute system design procedures to reduce risks of creating Frankensteins – mediation that produces injustices. Of course, some courts have policies fulfilling the … Continue reading Courts Should Make Mediations Good Samaritans Not Frankensteins
Paul M. Lurie, now a retired partner at Schiff Hardin LLP, in 2013 created the Guided Choice Interest Group and its website. It established what is now known as the Guided Mediation, which was originally called Guided Choice Mediation. Here’s his description of the current process. Guided Mediation is a collection of best practices … Continue reading Paul M. Lurie on Guided Mediation
A quarter century ago, Professor Len Riskin published an article describing a grid of mediator orientiations including a facilitative-evaluative dimension. Despite critiques of this framework, including by Len himself, many mediators, trainers, and teachers still use these concepts as mediation models, expressing strong feelings that one model is good and the other is bad. These … Continue reading We Should Replace Mediation Models with a Unified Conceptual Framework
Bill Marsh, a UK mediator and editor of the Kluwer Mediation Blog, wrote a good post about key characteristics of mediators: Warmth and Competence. He suggests that these are related to mediators’ self-reflection, authenticity, cultural competence, and timing. It’s a good, concise post you might share with your students. Take a look. [Click the title … Continue reading Important Mediator Characteristics
As you may have heard, Dwight Golann will receive the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution’s scholarship award this year. This has prompted a chorus of congratulations, and I join in the accolades for his work. For many reasons. Here are some of them. He continues to practice mediation and his mediations clearly inform his work. … Continue reading Appreciation of Dwight Golann
From GFOI Richard Peterson: The USC Gould Center for Dispute Resolution and JAMS are holding their fifth annual symposium with two upcoming webinars Wednesday, April 14, 2021 The Arbitrator’s Approach to Contract Interpretation Issues: Civil vs. Common Law Perspectives 8:00 a.m. Pacific / 11:00 a.m. Eastern / 5:00 p.m. London / 11:00 p.m. Singapore … Continue reading USC Gould Center for Dispute Resolution Fifth Annual Symposium
Anna Howard‘s new book, EU Cross-Border Commercial Mediation: Listening to Disputants – Changing the Frame; Framing the Changes, provides valuable insights about business disputing. It reports the findings of her study about mediation of EU cross-border commercial disputes, but the dynamics she describes occur in the US and probably many other countries as well. Anna … Continue reading Anna Howard’s New Book Examines Why Businesses Don’t Use Mediation – And Other Issues
Have you heard? After all the lousy movies and TV shows that provide ghastly depictions of mediation, Fox TV has produced a series, The Mediator with Ice-T that shows the public exactly how mediation works. What Judge Judy et al. do for courts, Ice-T does for mediation. Disputants tell their stories. Ice-T consults experts. Then … Continue reading Finally, A Mediation TV Program That Tells It Like It Is (Not)
