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Full-Text Articles in Law
Mosten And Scully’S New Book On Unbundled Legal Services, John M. Lande
Mosten And Scully’S New Book On Unbundled Legal Services, John M. Lande
Faculty Blogs
This post discusses Forrest (Woody) Mosten and Elizabeth Potter Scully’s book, Unbundled Legal Services: A Family Lawyer’s Guide. Unbundling involves providing specified services to legal clients rather than “full service” representation. Unbundling is particularly helpful in family matters because parties generally understand the issues and may represent themselves well if they have some legal help. Many family courts are overwhelmed with large numbers of cases involving self-represented litigants, so providing unbundled legal services can make a significant contribution to the legal system. In virtually all types of cases, some people have the interests in unbundling, not just family matters.
Takeaways From New Hampshire Mediation Training, John M. Lande
Takeaways From New Hampshire Mediation Training, John M. Lande
Faculty Blogs
This post highlights some key findings from survey data and focus-group-like comments from court mediation training for the training participants as well as readers of this blog.
Stone Soup: Learning How People Actually Prepare For Negotiation And Mediation, John Lande
Stone Soup: Learning How People Actually Prepare For Negotiation And Mediation, John Lande
Faculty Blogs
This post suggests questions in Stone Soup interviews that students can ask lawyers and mediators about how they prepare for negotiation and mediation.
Letter To Kelly, John Lande
Letter To Kelly, John Lande
Faculty Blogs
This is a letter I wrote to someone who was about to start law school. I advised keeping focused on their goals and how best to achieve them. I cautioned about portrayals of lawyers on TV and in the movies. I warned about the “hidden curriculum” which creates misimpressions by focusing on appellate cases. I encouraged them to remember what it is like to be a “normal” person, a perspective they may forget after being initiated in the legal tribe. I advised trying to see the world through others’ eyes.
Lessons From The Aba’S Excellent Report On Mediator Techniques, John M. Lande
Lessons From The Aba’S Excellent Report On Mediator Techniques, John M. Lande
Faculty Blogs
This post highlights findings from the report of the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution Task Force on Research on Mediator Techniques. The report identified 47 studies from the past four decades that analyzed effects of particular mediator actions on certain mediation outcomes. The Task Force found that none of the categories of mediator actions has clear, uniform effects across the studies. In general, the studies found that some generally uncontroversial actions – such as eliciting suggestions, focusing on emotions and relationships, building trust, expressing empathy, praising disputants, and setting agendas – may or may not produce positive effects. It found …
Empowering Consumers Through Online Dispute Resolution, Amy J. Schmitz
Empowering Consumers Through Online Dispute Resolution, Amy J. Schmitz
Faculty Publications
We transact online every day, hoping that no problems will occur. However, our purchases are not always perfect: goods may not arrive; products may be faulty; expectations may go unmet. When this occurs, we are often left frustrated, with no means for seeking redress. Phone calls to customer service are generally unappealing and ineffective, and traditional face-to-face or judicial processes for asserting claims are impractical after weighing costs against likely recovery. This is especially true when seeking redress requires travel, or for crossborder claims involving jurisdictional complexities. This situation has created a need for online dispute resolution (“ODR”), which brings …
Kiser’S Soft Skills For The Effective Lawyer, John Lande
Kiser’S Soft Skills For The Effective Lawyer, John Lande
Faculty Blogs
This post describes Randall Kiser’s book, Soft Skills for the Effective Lawyer. He defines soft skills as including “intrapersonal and interpersonal competencies such as practical problem solving, stress management, self-confidence, initiative, optimism, interpersonal communication, the ability to convey empathy to another, the ability to see a situation from another’s perspective, teamwork, collaboration, client relations, business development, and the like.” He presents research showing that legal clients especially value these skills in lawyers.
Published Versions Of Tower Of Babel Symposium Articles, John M. Lande
Published Versions Of Tower Of Babel Symposium Articles, John M. Lande
Faculty Blogs
This post provides links to the articles in the Tower of Babel Symposium.
Dealing With Causes As Well As Symptoms Of Law Students’ And Lawyers’ Lack Of Well-Being, John Lande
Dealing With Causes As Well As Symptoms Of Law Students’ And Lawyers’ Lack Of Well-Being, John Lande
Faculty Blogs
This post discusses the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being’s report, The Path to Lawyer Well-Being: Practical Recommendations for Positive Change. The report recommends that faculty “assess law school practices and offer faculty education on promoting well-being in the classroom.” It cites research suggesting that “potential culprits that undercut student well-being includ[e] hierarchical markers of worth such as comparative grading, mandatory curves, status-seeking placement practices, lack of clear and timely feedback, and teaching practices that are isolating and intimidating.” This post notes that legal practice is inherently stressful and recommends changing legal practice culture. Individual practitioners may reduce their …
Message For Students Interested In Adr, John Lande
Message For Students Interested In Adr, John Lande
Faculty Blogs
This post provides suggestions for things that law students interested in ADR might read and do.
Congress And Commercial Trusts: Dealing With Diversity Jurisdiction Post-Americold, S. I. Strong
Congress And Commercial Trusts: Dealing With Diversity Jurisdiction Post-Americold, S. I. Strong
Faculty Publications
The treatment of commercial trusts reached its nadir in early 2016, when the U.S. Supreme Court held in Americold Realty Trust v. ConAgra Foods, Inc. that the citizenship of a commercial trust should be equated with that of its shareholder-beneficiaries for purposes of diversity jurisdiction. Unfortunately, the sheer number of shareholder-beneficiaries in most commercial trusts (often amounting to hundreds if not thousands of individuals) typically precludes the parties' ability to establish complete diversity and thus eliminates the possibility of federal jurisdiction over most commercial trust disputes. As a result, virtually all commercial trust disputes will now be heard in state …
What Theory Do Practitioners Want?, John M. Lande
What Theory Do Practitioners Want?, John M. Lande
Faculty Blogs
There isn’t a single negotiation theory – it comes from many different sources. For example, one person said that labeling using conceptual frameworks, such as Roger Fisher’s and Daniel Shapiro’s five core concerns, can be useful in understanding and dealing with emotions. Others pointed to the value of procedural justice, human needs, and social value theories. Social value theory involves people’s orientations about resource allocation.
Drop Everything And Read Noam’S Masterpiece Right Now, John Lande
Drop Everything And Read Noam’S Masterpiece Right Now, John Lande
Faculty Blogs
This post describes Noam Ebner’s article, Negotiation is Changing. He argues that people’s everyday behaviors have changed in recent years, and that “people-as-negotiators, and therefore negotiation itself, have also undergone significant change.” He describes how people’s bodies are physiologically changing, how we are changing our behaviors, how we are being changed by our new behaviors, and how we are interacting in new ways. He illustrates his thesis by describing changes in behavioral, psychological, and emotional elements of negotiation including attention, communication, empathy, and
Moving Negotiation Theory From The Tower Of Babel Toward A World Of Mutual Understanding Summary, John M. Lande
Moving Negotiation Theory From The Tower Of Babel Toward A World Of Mutual Understanding Summary, John M. Lande
Faculty Blogs
Our current negotiation theory needs improvement. As we develop better negotiation theory, we should start by appreciating the valuable work that has been done by our predecessors. Moving forward, we should acknowledge that scholars are subject to the same cognitive biases that we document in our work. For example, it is easy to fall prey to the status quo and confirmatory biases that keep us from developing better understandings of negotiation. Thus we should take conscious action to carefully consider how traditional ways of thinking distort our understandings and whether there are better ways to understand negotiation. This is particularly …
What Is Negotiation, Anyway?, John M. Lande
What Is Negotiation, Anyway?, John M. Lande
Faculty Blogs
This is a particularly useful article for the first class or two of a negotiation course, guaranteed to stimulate a spirited discussion.
Collective Bargaining And Dispute System Design, Rafael Gely
Collective Bargaining And Dispute System Design, Rafael Gely
Faculty Publications
This article seeks to reestablish the conversation between collective bargaining and dispute system design scholars. Part II provides a brief description of the system of collective bargaining by focusing on the three key steps of union organizing, contract negotiation, and contract administration. Part III does the same for the literature on dispute system design by identifying some of the seminal literature in the field as well as other work particularly relevant to workplace dispute resolution systems. In Part IV, the article seeks to achieve one modest goal and one that is more ambitious. As to the modest goal, this article …
Why And How Businesses Use Planned Early Dispute Resolution, John M. Lande, Peter W. Benner
Why And How Businesses Use Planned Early Dispute Resolution, John M. Lande, Peter W. Benner
Faculty Publications
This article reports the results of an empirical inquiry analyzing why some businesses do think and act differently by adopting "planned early dispute resolution" (PEDR) systems when most other businesses probably do not do so. PEDR is a general approach designed to enable parties and their lawyers to resolve disputes favorably and with reduced cost as early as reasonably possible. It involves strategic planning for preventing conflict and handling disputes in the early stages of conflict, rather than dealing with disputes ad hoc as they arise. There is no general understanding of what PEDR is since businesses use a variety …