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Full-Text Articles in Law
Randy Kiser’S New Book On Professional Judgment For Lawyers, John Lande
Randy Kiser’S New Book On Professional Judgment For Lawyers, John Lande
Faculty Blogs
This post describes Randall Kiser’s book, Professional Judgment for Lawyers. He defines professional judgment as “the deliberate synthesis of an attorney’s knowledge, experience, skills, discernment, and character to ethically advance a client’s interest.” The book combines empirical research, cognitive and social psychology, organizational behavior, legal ethics, and neuroscience to improve decision-making by attorneys, clients, judges, arbitrators, mediators, and juries.
Easy As Pi, John Lande
Easy As Pi, John Lande
Faculty Blogs
This post presents some interactions with Pi, an AI system that is more conversational than others. It illustrates that, in the foreseeable future, AI systems almost certainly will become a lot more sophisticated and be incorporated into much of our lives, often in ways we will not notice
Training Your Mediator Bot, John Lande
Training Your Mediator Bot, John Lande
Faculty Blogs
This somewhat tongue-in-cheek post discusses biases in AI systems. Noting that AI bots need to be “trained,” this post suggests that untrained mediator bots may spew out unwanted interventions such as providing undesired evaluations of BATNA values – or failing to provide desired evaluations. So mediators probably will need to co-mediate with their bots for a while to observe and correct its biases. Ironically, bots may produce language that normal humans understand much better than the confusing jargon we habitually use. So the mediator bots may need to train human mediators.
Teaching Students To Focus On Party Decision-Making, John Lande
Teaching Students To Focus On Party Decision-Making, John Lande
Faculty Blogs
This post describes why law schools don’t teach students very much about helping clients make decisions and suggests techniques for doing so. It suggests (1) focusing on parties’ roles throughout relevant courses, (2) including meaningful party roles in simulations and competitions, (3) using simulations focusing solely on preparation, (4) using multi-stage simulations, (5) helping students focus on parties’ intangible interests in simulations and Stone Soup interviews, (6) using the terms “pre-mediation-session” or “before mediation sessions,” (7) taking advantage of the litigation interest and risk assessment framework and materials, and (8) recommending that schools offer a course on strategic case evaluation …
Focus On Party Decision-Making, John M. Lande
Focus On Party Decision-Making, John M. Lande
Faculty Blogs
A major motivation in the modern dispute resolution movement has been to increase and improve parties’ decision-making in their legal disputes. Parties can participate more effectively in negotiation and mediation if they engage in decision-making early in disputes. This suggests the importance of good preparation before negotiation and mediation sessions. When parties are well-prepared in advance, they are as knowledgeable, confident, and assertive as possible in making decisions in their cases
Charlie Irvine's Challenge To Mediators To Describe Your Mediation System, John M. Lande
Charlie Irvine's Challenge To Mediators To Describe Your Mediation System, John M. Lande
Faculty Blogs
Charlie Irvine is the Course Leader on the University of Strathclyde’s (Scotland) MSc/LLM in Mediation and Conflict Resolution and the Director of the Strathclyde Mediation Clinic. The Clinic provides a free mediation service in which experienced practitioners work alongside trainee mediators to help people resolve disputes without going to court or tribunal. The following is Charlie’s Director’s Column published in Mediation Matters!, the Clinic’s quarterly newsletter. Irvine wrote an account of his own mediation system that was one of ten real mediation systems Lande analyzed in Real Mediation Systems to Help Parties and Mediators Achieve Their Goals.
Party Self-Empowerment From Preparation For Mediation Sessions, John Lande
Party Self-Empowerment From Preparation For Mediation Sessions, John Lande
Faculty Blogs
If parties are well-prepared before mediation sessions, they will be knowledgeable, confident, and assertive so that they can exercise their decision-making authority as well as possible. Well-prepared parties can make decisions before and during mediation sessions rather than simply relying on mediators to promote their self-determination. In other words, they will feel more empowered to participate productively. Depending on the circumstances, mediators, lawyers, courts, and/or mediation programs may help parties get prepared.
Len Riskin Pulls It All Together In Managing Conflict Mindfully, John Lande
Len Riskin Pulls It All Together In Managing Conflict Mindfully, John Lande
Faculty Blogs
This post describes Len Riskin’s impressive career and summarizes themes in his book, Managing Conflict Mindfully: Don’t Believe Everything You Think. He argues that people can wisely manage conflict by learning to use and integrate three sets of ideas and techniques – negotiation, mindfulness, and internal family systems (IFS). You can think of IFS as the conversation or negotiation between different voices in our heads. Rather than conceiving people as having only a single “unitary” self, IFS recognizes the “multiplicity” of our selves.
Problem-Resolution Lawyering Across The Twenty-First Century Law Curriculum, John Lande
Problem-Resolution Lawyering Across The Twenty-First Century Law Curriculum, John Lande
Faculty Blogs
This post highlights an article by Kris Franklin and F. Peter Phillips. They argue, “Framing lawyers’ professional role as helping clients resolve problems – and therefore in turn, conceiving law school coursework as preparation for that role – should alter teaching, learning, and law practice in ways that inevitably improves each.” The article includes “exemplars” of ways to shift the legal curriculum to focus on lawyers as problem resolution partners.
A Proposal For The Joint Development Of Generative Ai For The Dispute Resolution Profession, John Lande
A Proposal For The Joint Development Of Generative Ai For The Dispute Resolution Profession, John Lande
Faculty Blogs
This post by Gary Doernhoefer proposes the development of a data set for the dispute resolution profession as the basis for AI systems. The ideal model would be for a collaboration in the dispute resolution field to create the refined data set, establish guardrails, and set privacy parameters for the use of the data. This would involve a centralized advisory board to address concerns such as (1) privacy requirements for how the queries are received, stored, and used, (2) the expertise needed to curate additional training materials, (3) shared costs of development, and (4) gaining the cooperation of industry authors …
Real Mediation Systems To Help Parties And Mediators Achieve Their Goals, John M. Lande
Real Mediation Systems To Help Parties And Mediators Achieve Their Goals, John M. Lande
Faculty Publications
This article argues that it is time for a paradigm shift in our current general mediation theory because of numerous problems. Our current theory is incomplete at best and seriously misleading at worst. The traditional mediation models are oversimplified, poorly mapping onto the reality of practice. They combine multiple elements that are not necessarily correlated. Many practitioners ignore them because they are confusing or not helpful. People do not understand the theoretical meanings because the terms are not consistent with commonly understood language. Arguments about what is or is not real or good mediation have spawned unhelpful ideological divisions in …
Ai, Adr, And Anxiety, John Lande
Ai, Adr, And Anxiety, John Lande
Faculty Blogs
This post discusses AI generally, growing anxiety about it and modern life generally, and how we can manage this anxiety. Anxiety about AI may be feeding into a more general anxiety about events in the US and around the world. We can address anxiety by focusing on what we actually can control. Regarding AI and ADR, I suggest that the machine mediation “glass” will be partly empty and partly full – as is human mediation. It’s important to recognize our own reactions to and fears about AI, have as accurate and balanced an understanding of what’s happening as possible, acknowledge …
Avatar Mediation, John Lande
Avatar Mediation, John Lande
Faculty Blogs
This post speculates about how AI systems might mediate (or assist in mediation) in the not-too-distant future.
Should We Get Rid Of The Bar Exam?, John Lande
Should We Get Rid Of The Bar Exam?, John Lande
Faculty Blogs
This post discusses an article analyzing empirical data about licensing of lawyers in Wisconsin. Graduates of Wisconsin schools have a diploma privilege and are licensed in that state without taking a bar exam. The article argues that bar exams generally don’t fulfill their purpose of protecting the public. They consume tremendous resources of the legal profession, law schools, and law student and divert attention from activities that are likely to be more effective and valuable.
Ai And Empathy, John Lande
Ai And Empathy, John Lande
Faculty Blogs
This post speculates about whether AI systems will be able to replicate human empathy – at least enough to satisfy people interacting with them.
A Mediator And A Bot Walk Into A Bar …, John Lande
A Mediator And A Bot Walk Into A Bar …, John Lande
Faculty Blogs
This post presents ChatGPT’s decent response to a question about the main models of mediation (or at least much better than what most of my students would have written).
How The Real Practice Systems Project Can Help Improve Mediation Quality, John M. Lande
How The Real Practice Systems Project Can Help Improve Mediation Quality, John M. Lande
Faculty Blogs
Improving mediation quality is tricky. This post describes how the Real Practice Systems Project can help.