Much legal education in the US is like telling someone how to ride a bike or having them read an instruction manual. It’s important, but most people wouldn’t get very far if that’s all you did. You could simply give them a bike and tell them to go, but that could lead to some … Continue reading Stone Soup Assessment: Bob Dauber’s Evidence Course
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 … Continue reading Stone Soup: A Thousand Great Chefs
We all say that preparation is important – it’s more popular than mom and apple pie – but we have only vague ideas about how people actually consider possible alternatives. This includes the negotiators themselves. We sometimes list general factors or approaches, but usually that’s as far as we get. I will go out on … Continue reading Stone Soup: Learning How People Actually Prepare for Negotiation and Mediation
Stacey-Rae Simcox (Stetson) is using a Stone Soup assignment in her trusts and estates course. The extra-credit assignment is for students to interview someone who has been involved in a significant estate settlement. It adapts the Stone Soup model assignment by suggesting a very useful list of questions about things one might ask about … Continue reading Stone Soup Assignment: Stacey-Rae Simcox’s Trusts and Estates Course
After I attended the orientation on Friday for the LLM Program at my school, I sent an email to the students suggesting some resources that they might be interested in. It occurred to me that other faculty may want to send a similar message to your students. I adapted the message, below, and you may … Continue reading Message for Students Interested in ADR
Today’s edition features Bob Dauber’s (Arizona State) assessment of the negotiation course he taught this summer and plans for his evidence course this fall. Evidence Course Bob wrote, “I recently started teaching evidence in the fall semester. I usually have over 90 students in that class, and I offer them an extra credit assignment: … Continue reading Stone Soup Assessments & Assignments: Bob Dauber’s Negotiation and Evidence Courses
The Stone Soup Project is not only about developing and sharing knowledge about actual dispute resolution practice, but also sharing knowledge about Stone Soup pedagogical techniques. In that spirit, we have asked faculty using Stone Soup assignments and activities to share assessments of their experiences as well as plans for the future. This is … Continue reading Stone Soup Assessments & Assignments: Rafael Gely’s Negotiation Course and Charity Scott’s Negotiation and Mediation Courses
The fall semester will start soon and you may be working on your plans. So here’s a reminder of all the fabulous resources that GFOIs Sharon Press and Bobbi McAdoo have compiled from their annual resource share at the ABA conference. Here are a few readings you might want to include in your courses. Happy … Continue reading Teaching Resources
We often miss opportunities to generate and share knowledge about actual practice from student competitions and CLE programs. This post in the mini-course suggests some ways to get more benefit from these activities. When I have judged student skills competitions at my school, typically one or both of the other judges in my “panel” were … Continue reading Stone Soup Mini-Course: Getting the Most Out of Competitions and CLEs
Faculty have multiple options for fulfilling the fundamental goal of the Stone Soup Project to produce and use valuable qualitative data in their courses about actual dispute resolution practice, including: Assigning students to conduct interviews and write reports about entire cases. Assigning students to conduct interviews and write reports about smaller aspects of cases instead … Continue reading Stone Soup Mini-Course: Designing Course Assignments
