How cool would it be for your students to interview lawyers, mediators, arbitrators, or other practitioners about how they really think and act in their work? Practitioners generally develop their own categories of routine and challenging situations in their work, and they develop regular practices and strategies for dealing with them. In mediation, this involves … Continue reading Teaching Students How Practitioners Really Think and Act
In The Critical Importance of Pre-Session Preparation in Mediation, I explained why parties’ preparation for their mediation sessions can produce many significant benefits. This post suggests that preparation before mediation sessions is an important opportunity for parties to empower themselves. People have used the concept of “empowerment” in mediation in various ways, as I described … Continue reading Party Self-Empowerment from Preparation for Mediation Sessions
I had the good fortune to be Len Riskin’s colleague from 2000, when I arrived in Missouri, until he moved to the University of Florida in 2007. He now is a Visiting Professor of Law and Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Center on Negotiation, Mediation, and Restorative Justice at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law … Continue reading Len Riskin Pulls It All Together in Managing Conflict Mindfully
My colleague, Ilhyung Lee, pointed me to another graduation speech highlighting the importance of generally listening respectfully to and engaging with people we disagree with. He sent me a link to a speech by University of Chicago Law Professor Tom Ginsburg, entitled “Conversation and Democracy.” I had cited Bret Stephen’s speech and Jen Reynolds linked … Continue reading What We Do Is So Important
New York Times columnist Bret Stephens was the commencement speaker at the University of Chicago, and he published his speech, Go Forth and Argue. Arguing may seem like the antithesis of negotiation and mediation. But it’s not – at least not if we sincerely listen to others with differing views, are open to reconsidering our … Continue reading Go Forth and Argue
I’m sure no techie, but probably like you, I have been intrigued about stories about the ChatGPT program. One illustration was in my post, A Mediator and a Bot Walk into a Bar … Of course, artificial intelligence almost certainly will become much more sophisticated in the foreseeable future. Major tech firms have been working … Continue reading Avatar Mediation
From George Siedel: The ABA Business Law Section publishes Business Law Today, which recently started a tools section. Here is a link to my piece on negotiation tools. Take a look. [From the home page, click on the title of this post to access the tools.]
All this AI stuff is bending my mind. It’s been around for quite a while, but the experience with ChatGPT has profoundly changed our perceptions, feelings, and expectations about it. We wonder what human skills and tasks will become obsolete as machines are able to perform some so much better, faster, and cheaper. People have … Continue reading AI and Empathy
New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote a touching essay about his reactions to a lifelong friend’s struggle with depression and ultimate suicide. Mr. Brooks gave Pete advice about how to deal with his depression – and found that his efforts were counterproductive. It’s only later that I read that when you give a depressed … Continue reading The Gift of Really Listening
Forrest (Woody) Mosten, Elizabeth Potter Scully, and Lara Traum’s book, Effectively Representing Clients in Family Mediation, was just published by the ABA. This is particularly valuable because many parties rely on lawyers to represent them in mediation, and there probably are many more lawyers who act as advocates in mediation than those who mediate. The … Continue reading New Book on Effectively Representing Clients in Family Mediation
