Law Commons^™

Merging Mediation Models – And Other Lessons, John Lande

Faculty Blogs

This post offers suggestions for teaching about mediation practice without focusing primarily on the problematic traditional mediation theories described in Section 3.C. It suggests that faculty (1) help students understand dynamics related to assessments of court outcomes, (2) teach students to strategically combine elements from the traditional models, (3) teach them how to manage the counteroffer process, (4) include lawyer-client relationships in simulations, and (5) use longer simulations including preparation for mediation sessions.

Lira In Criminal Cases, John Lande

Faculty Blogs

This post describes how the LIRA framework can be adapted in criminal cases and used in plea bargaining. It suggests how to calculate and use bottom lines in these cases.

Concepts That Can Help Practitioners Help Parties Make Decisions In Disputes, John Lande

Faculty Blogs

A fundamental purpose of dispute resolution practitioners is to help people make decisions about processes, procedures, and issues in managing their conflicts. This post lists concepts to help people make decisions about the choice of dispute resolution process, specific procedures in a given process, and resolving issues in dispute. In resolving disputes, people should consider the value of plausible options and the future tangible costs and intangible costs and interests of continuing the dispute. The post lists specific cognitions, possible actions, and practitioner interventions promoting good decision-making.

Problems With Teaching “Integrative” Negotiation, John Lande

Faculty Blogs

This post responds to Debra Berman’s piece, Is Our Over-Emphasis on Integrative Negotiation Pedagogy Falling Short of Reality? My answer is “yes.” Much – perhaps most – negotiation and mediation of civil cases these days in the US involves a counteroffer process where lawyers focus almost exclusively on allocating money based on a zero-sum assumption. So if our courses focus too much on interests-and-options processes, students get a misimpression about the frequency of what happens in the real world. If we don’t prepare them to operate effectively in practice, they will be in for a rude surprise after they graduate. …

A Message For Law Students To Prepare Themselves For Legal Practice, John Lande

Faculty Blogs

This post includes suggestions to help plan self-directed learning to supplement what students learn in law school. It recommends that students (1) appreciate the values and limitations of the law, (2) recognize the “hidden curriculum” in law school, (3) understand that “thinking like a lawyer” really is about helping clients achieve their goals, (4) develop a strategic plan for their education, (5) compile a portfolio, (6) take clinical, externship, and practice courses, (7) interview practitioners, and (8) join the ABA and other bar and professional associations.

You Really Should Know About Kris Franklin, John Lande

Faculty Blogs

This post profiles New York Law School Professor Kris Franklin. She teaches a negotiating, counseling, and interviewing course, which she says really should be called “Client Representation and Case Handling.” Her course on family law practice teaches all the family law doctrine covered in traditional family law courses but she does it exclusively using simulations. In contrast to my suggestion for renaming law school as “negotiation school,” she suggests calling it “legal problem-solving school,” which I think is even better.

Study Finds That Law Schools Fail To Prepare Students To Work With Clients And Negotiate, John Lande

Faculty Blogs

This post provides excerpts from the Building a Better Bar study about new law school graduates’ unmet instructional needs. The study found that new lawyers were “woefully unprepared” to work with clients. They had difficulty (1) communicating with clients, (2) managing expectations, (3) breaking bad news, (4) coping with difficult clients, (5) negotiating with counterparts and clients, and (5) understanding the “big picture” of client matters.

Need For Clear Language Initiative To Un-Babel Our Models, John M. Lande

Faculty Blogs

Professional jargon is helpful in some fields because it promotes communication between professionals like brain surgeons and rocket scientists.

But jargon is extremely problematic for dispute resolution because it confuses and excludes laypeople and other stakeholders.

Amicus Curiae Briefs: A Message From The 7th Circuit, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

Like other brief writers, the amicus brief’s writer must heed the court’s rules of practice and procedure, including rules that prescribe a brief’s maximum page length. But a brief writer can meet the court’s circumstances and expectations without going to the max. A few months before he ascended to the Supreme Court bench in 1943, D.C. Circuit Judge Wiley B. Rutledge advised advocates to strike a balance by being “as brief as one can be consistent with adequate and clear presentation of his case."

An amicus’ prudent approach to concise brief writing is to adapt the advice delivered by opera …

Mere Common Ownership And The Antitrust Laws, Thomas A. Lambert

Faculty Publications

"Common ownership," also called "horizontal shareholding," refers to a stock investor's ownership of minority stakes in multiple competing firms. Recent empirical studies have purported to show that institutional investors' common ownership reduces competition among commonly owned competitors. "Mere common ownership" is horizontal shareholding that is not accompanied by any sort of illicit agreement, such as a hub-and-spoke conspiracy, or the holding of a control-conferring stake. This Article considers the legality of mere common ownership under the U.S. antitrust laws. Prominent antitrust scholars and the leading treatise have concluded that mere common ownership that has the incidental effect of lessening market …

Jeff Trueman’S Study On Nightmares Of “Positional” Tactics In Mediation, John M. Lande

Faculty Blogs

This post reports on an excellent study about the challenges of lawyers, mediators, and insurance claims professionals in mediation. His findings are consistent with my observations about the emotional pains of positional negotiation. Many of the cases in his study involve insurance, which are supposedly “money-only cases” because the parties generally haven’t had a prior relationship and have no interest in a future relationship. But Jeff found that emotions and relationships actually can be very important in these cases – the professionals’ emotions and relationships with each other.

Donna Shestowsky’S Presentation On Litigants’ Views Of Court Adr Options, John M. Lande

Faculty Blogs

This post hightlights findings from Donna Shestowsky’s research finding that litigants seem to be unaware of ADR options, and that knowing about some of these options improves their opinions of the court itself. Surprisingly, having a lawyer did not make litigants more aware of ADR options, even when those options were offered by the court system.

Covid-19 And Its Impact On America's Retirement System, David M. English

Faculty Publications

There is a long-standing debate over whether America's retirement system is in crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic has resolved the debate. Perhaps the system was merely challenged prior to March 2020, but it is certainly in crisis now. The pandemic has negatively impacted all four of the principal pillars of retirement: Social Security, employer-sponsored retirement programs, earnings from part-time work, and the worker's own savings. This short article will discuss the impact of the pandemic on the retirement system and discuss possible ways to restore the system to health or at least ameliorate the damage.

They Should Call It Negotiation School, Not Law School, John Lande

Faculty Blogs

Considering that lawyers spend much more time negotiating than going to trial, I offered suggestions for fundamentally reorganizing law school curricula and policies. This somewhat mischievous thought experiment includes ideas that are too radical for any law school to consider given the deeply entrenched institutionalization of legal education. But it is useful to ponder how law schools generally do a poor job of preparing students for the reality of practice and how schools might reform their curricula to do a better job.

Distorted Drug Patents, Erika Lietzan

Faculty Publications

Drug patents are distorted. Unlike most other inventors, drug inventors must complete years of testing to the government’s specifications and seek government approval to commercialize their inventions. All the while, the patent term runs. When a drug inventor finally launches a medicine that embodies the invention, only a fraction of the patent life remains. And yet, conventional wisdom holds — and empirical studies show — that patent life is essential to innovation in the pharmaceutical industry, perhaps more so than any other inventive industry. Congress tried to do something about this in 1984, authorizing the Patent and Trademark Office to …

Co-Worker Evidence In Court, Sandra F. Sperino

Faculty Publications

This symposium explores ways to empower workers. Many employment laws rely on workers filing private rights of action to enforce the underlying substantive law. Unfortunately, when workers file these claims in court, courts often do not allow them to rely on evidence from their co-workers. While courts regularly allow employers to submit co-worker evidence of a plaintiff's poor performance or lack of qualifications, they often diminish or exclude a plaintiff's co-worker evidence that the plaintiff performed well or possessed desired qualifications. This Article identifies and explores this evidentiary inequality. It argues that efforts to empower workers must include the power …

Transactional Interest And Risk Assessment, John Lande

Faculty Blogs

This post describes how the LIRA can be adapted for transactional negotiations.

References To Children's Stories And Fairy Tales In Judicial Opinions And Written Advocacy, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

Jones v. State is typical of recent state and federal court decisions that have spiced substantive or procedural points with references to classic children’s stories or classic fairy tales. These literary resources have won places in American popular culture and are likely generally familiar to readers, especially when (as in Jones) the court provides any necessary context explaining the resource’s relevance to the decision.

In previous Journal of The Missouri Bar articles, I have written about judges’ invocation of an array of influential cultural markers that are generally familiar to Americans. These articles explored written opinions that accompanied substantive or …

What’S A Bottom Line?, John M. Lande

Faculty Blogs

During the life cycle of a case, lawyers start with vague and tentative bottom lines, and they develop more precise and confident bottom lines as the case progresses. People typically are not candid with others – and sometimes even with themselves – about their real walkaway point (or “trip wire”) for ending negotiations. Indeed, “bottom line” claims are standard negotiation gambits using wildly inflated numbers that experienced negotiators and mediators routinely assume to be false.

Batna May Be Less Important Than You Think – And Teach, John M. Lande

Faculty Blogs

When bargaining in the shadow of the law, the expected court outcome (aka BATNA value) is only part of the more important consideration for negotiators – their bottom lines.

After Espinoza: What's Left Of The Establishment Clause?, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

Consistent with the Establishment Clause, the Supreme Court had permitted the government to fund public and private K-12 schools, so long as any direct aid was not diverted to an explicitly religious purpose. In Espinoza v. Montana Dept. of Rev., the Court held that when there is a government program with a secular purpose, such as education, the Free Exercise Clause requires that the program be available without regard to religion. Clearly the Religion Clauses have undergone a major transformation since the days of no parochial school aid whatsoever in the 1970s and 80s. So, it bears asking: What …

Lira Videos, John Lande

Faculty Blogs

This post collects lots of videos of presentations I gave about LIRA.

Batnas And The Emotional Pains From “Positional Negotiation", John M. Lande

Faculty Blogs

This post describes the role of BATNAs in the “positional negotiation” game, pains that it causes people in many roles, and some remedies to avoid and reduce these pains. In this “game,” each side seeks to maximize its outcome by starting with extreme positions and then making a series of counteroffers. Each side concocts stories justifying their positions but everyone knows that these stories are exaggerations at best and fibs at worst. If you gave truth serum to the lawyers, they would admit that they don’t really believe their own arguments.

But they do it because “everybody does it.” It’s …

Greenwashing No More: The Case For Stronger Regulation Of Environmental Marketing, Robin M. Rotman, Chloe J. Gossett, Hope D. Goldman

Faculty Publications

Fraudulent and deceptive environmental claims in marketing (sometimes called “greenwashing”) are a persistent problem in the United States, despite nearly thirty years of efforts by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to prevent it. This Essay focuses on a recent trend in greenwashing - fraudulent “organic” claims for nonagricultural products, such as home goods and personal care products. We offer three recommendations. First, we suggest ways that the FTC can strengthen its oversight of “organic” claims for nonagricultural products and improve coordination with the USDA. Second, we argue for inclusion of guidelines for “organic” claims in the next revision of the …

Batna’S Got To Go — And Here’S A Better Idea, John M. Lande

Faculty Blogs

BATNA et al. are examples of popular terms that are widely misunderstood. In particular, while BATNAs really are courses of action (like going to trial or making a deal with a different party), people often confuse them with the expected values of those courses of action (like the trial outcome or profit from a deal).

Mediate.Com Publishes “Seven Keys To Unlock Mediation’S Golden Age”, John Lande

Faculty Blogs

Mediate.com published a series entitled Seven Keys to Unlock Mediation’s Golden Age. The objective is to encourage discussion among stakeholders about navigating mediation’s best future. The seven keys are: Leadership, Data, Education, Profession, Technology, Government and Usage. Descriptions of each “key” has two to four short articles.

Resources For Teaching About Batna, Bottom Lines, And Lira, John Lande

Faculty Blogs

Practically every negotiation, mediation, and ADR survey course teaches students that they should figure out their BATNA when negotiating or mediating. This is much easier said than done. This post provides lots of resources to help faculty teach students about BATNAs and – more importantly – about bottom lines. For additional publications about these topics, see Sections 3.A and 5.

Decision-Making As An Essential Element Of Our Field, John M. Lande

Faculty Blogs

This post suggests that we think of our work as focused on process design, strategy, and decision-making in managing conflict. Our field seeks to help parties solve problems when they lack good (or sometimes any) practical dispute resolution options. This post describes such situations and identifies strategies to increase and improve parties’ decision-making.

The Limits Of Antitrust In The 21st Century, Thomas A. Lambert

Faculty Publications

Antitrust is having a moment. Commentators and policymakers, both progressive and conservative, are calling for increased antitrust enforcement to address all manner of social ills. From technology platforms' power over speech and encroachments on user privacy to wage stagnation in more concentrated labor markets, to competition softening from ever-larger index funds, to growing income inequality, reduced innovation, and threats to democracy itself - the list of maladies for which antitrust has been proposed as a remedy goes on and on.

This Article revisits The Limits of Antitrust in light of the current antitrust moment. Part I describes the central components …

Reflections On Covid-19, Insurance, Business Interruption, Systemic Risk, And The Future, Robert H. Jerry Ii

Faculty Publications

The COVID-19 pandemic is a major loss event for the insurance industry. This chapter begins with an overview of the pandemic’s most significant insurance implications. Because business interruption has been the most prominently discussed of these impacts, the second part of this chapter takes a closer look at business interruption insurance. This part describes how markets for this coverage are structured in the U.S., and then undertakes a detailed analysis of one of the most common business interruption policy forms, demonstrating that some aspects of this form, insofar as pandemic-caused business interruption is concerned, were not drafted with utmost precision. …