People often say that dispute resolution processes aren’t “one size fits all.” When practitioners are asked to opine about hypothetical problems, they often say “it depends” and they make “case by case” decisions. They are telling the truth. Lawyers make complex decisions as negotiators, litigation advocates, and mediators based on a lot of factors, so … Continue reading Teaching Students to Think Like Practitioners
Imagine that you just stared into the neuralyzer in Men in Black. It wiped out all your memory of the traditional bundled of models of mediation and negotiation. You know – facilitative and evaluative mediation, interest-based and positional negotiation, etc. etc. The neuralyzer also vaporized all references to them in texts and teaching materials. You’re … Continue reading Merging Mediation Models – And Other Lessons
Deborah Jones Merritt, co-author of the report, Building a Better Bar: The Twelve Building Blocks of Minimum Competence, wrote a post, Could We Create a New Bar Exam? She writes: Neither states nor the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) have ever validated the current exams; that means we have no evidence that the skills … Continue reading Building a Better Bar Study Suggests Need to Restructure Bar Exams
Kris Franklin is a kindred spirit to folks in our community. I hadn’t heard of her until I was wowed by her conversation with Peter Philips, which you can see in this 42-minute video. She’s a professor at New York Law School and here’s an excerpt from her webpage: An academic innovator, Kris Franklin brings … Continue reading You Really Should Know About Kris Franklin
From GFOI Debra Berman: As you begin to prepare your syllabus for next semester, please consider incorporating our Inter School Negotiation Practicum. Last year, I organized a nationwide “Inter-School Negotiation Practicum” that included 623 students from 23 law schools. And we are gearing up to offer it again this fall. If you choose to involve … Continue reading Inter-School Negotiation Practicum in the Fall
Now as an annual tradition, here’s a reminder of some of my favorite things you might require or recommend that students read as you gear up for the new year. My short “Letter to Kelly” provides advice for new 1Ls. If you teach a 1L course, you might assign it even though it doesn’t focus … Continue reading Readings and Resources for Teaching
From TGFOI Sharon Press and Bobbi McAdoo: Dear Colleagues, It is with great pleasure that Bobbi and I (finally) post the 2019 Legal Resources Share. The document has gotten so large and chock-filled with great ideas that we added this year, we split it into 2 documents: one containing the ideas and … Continue reading Another Year’s Wonderful Resource Share
Faculty using Stone Soup assignments have required students to write papers summarizing interviews or observations of actual cases. Like the assignments themselves, these papers vary quite a bit, as illustrated below. This post provides sample papers to give faculty ideas about what you might assign your classes in the future and provide papers you might … Continue reading Stone Soup: Student Papers From Gely’s Negotiation, Simcox’s Trust & Estates, and Dauber’s Evidence Courses
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
It would be hard to be more enthusiastic about Stone Soup than Carolyn Wilkes (Carrie) Kaas, the Co-Director of Quinnipiac’s Center on Dispute Resolution, Director of Experiential Education, as well as Director of Concentration Programs in Family Law and Civil Advocacy and Dispute Resolution. These days, she also teaches Quinnipiac’s Externship Program. Like a number … Continue reading Stone Soup Assessment: Carrie Kaas’s Externship Course
This post describes how Stone Soup pioneers used four different approaches in their mediation courses. Once again, it demonstrates colleagues’ creativity and the great potential for Stone Soup. Charlie Irvine had 20 LLM / MSc students and he assigned them to interview a mediator about a recent case. Students were required to write papers of … Continue reading Stone Soup Assessment: A Tale of Four Mediation Courses, by Charlie Irvine, Jim Levin, Martha Simmons, and Doug Yarn
I am extremely fortunate that Rafael Gely, the director of Missouri’s Center for the Study of Dispute Resolution, has been my partner in developing the Stone Soup Project. A year ago, when I first emailed him about it, the subject line was “a crazy idea?” Rafael’s immediate response was, “I love this idea! (Of course … Continue reading Stone Soup Assessment: Rafael Gely’s Negotiation Course