It’s that time of year when schools report all the cool things they have done in the preceding year. I’m proud to share two issues of the newsletter from Missouri. One issue of the newsletter lists the scholarly work of the senior fellows at our Center for the Study of Dispute Resolution. Stacie Strong and … Continue reading Missouri News
Litigation offers many potential benefits. It can help people solve difficult problems, make relationships and institutions function properly, and promote justice. It enables people to enlist legitimate, independent government officials to resolve disputes when the parties can’t resolve disputes themselves. Indeed, litigation provides mechanisms for structuring dispute resolution processes that enable most parties to ultimately … Continue reading Reality-Testing Questions for Real Life and Simulations – and Ideas for Stone Soup Assignments
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 first longitudinal … Continue reading What Do Litigants Really Want?
Ben Trachtenberg, one of the sharpest faculty at my school, wrote this outstanding article analyzing what went wrong during the highly-publicized controversies at the University of Missouri in 2015. Having lived through this painful conflict, Ben’s account seems extremely accurate – and brings up a lot of sad memories for me, reminding me of things … Continue reading A Case Study of Murphy’s Law in Missouri
Michaela Keet and Heather Heavin (Saskatchewan), have been studying “litigation interest and risk assessment” (LIRA), something you probably teach using different names. You probably emphasize the importance of analyzing BATNAs and preparing for negotiation and mediation, which are basic elements of LIRA. Building on their own and others’ research, they developed a simple but comprehensive … Continue reading Keet and Heavin on Why Litigation Interest and Risk Assessment is So Darn Important for Lawyers and Mediators – And How You Can Make Stone Soup With It
From my colleague, S.I. Strong: I am happy to announce the publication of the spring 2018 issue of the Journal of Dispute Resolution, which includes pieces from our symposium on The First Amendment, The University and Conflict. The articles will shortly be put on Westlaw and Lexis, but until then, you can download copies for … Continue reading Symposium Articles on The First Amendment, The University, and Conflict
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
This post channels 60% of Jack Nicholson but without the chicken salad sandwich. It describes three short pieces that you might want to use in courses or continuing education programs. Overcoming Roadblocks to Settlement The first is an article entitled Overcoming Roadblocks to Reaching Settlement in Family Law Cases published in Family Advocate, the magazine … Continue reading Three Easy Pieces
From Jackie Font-Guzmán: We have a call for chapters of a book I am co-editing, Running with Scissors: Leading in Uncertainty. Anyone who has a powerful leadership story to share in the times we are living is welcome to submit an abstract. This new leadership book series will focus on personal leadership accounts from … Continue reading Call for Papers: Running With Scissors
I was really pleased to meet Randall Kiser at last year’s ABA conference. I was very impressed by his important study (co-authored with Martin Asher and Blakeley McShane), Let’s Not Make a Deal: An Empirical Examination of Decision Making in Unsuccessful Negotiations. The top-line finding was that in 85.5% of cases, parties went to trial … Continue reading Kiser’s Soft Skills for the Effective Lawyer
