Fellow blogger Victoria Pynchon has been kind enough to send me a copy of her new book -- made extra-collectible by her handwritten inscription inside! She has unfortunately used a vulgarity in naming the volume, but the subtitle, The Grownups' ABCs of Conflict Resolution, gives a good sense of its...
A reader has brought my attention an obituary that appears in today's New York Times. Eric Schmertz died on Saturday, December 18, 2010. His life, as summarized by Dennis Hevesi for the Times, is quite a lesson for dispute resolvers....
Collaboration -- a practice so often touted by the world's leading ADR organizations -- is too seldom practiced by those organizations themselves. Therefore it is with great pleasure that I note a conference in February being jointly conducted by the ICC and the CPR Institute....
Ben Tennille is Chief Judge of the North Carolina Business Court, and spoke last week to the American College of Business Court Judges on how he runs Case Management Conferences in order to encourage clients to focus on settlement of cases at an early stage. It was an instructive insight into...
It is hard (we hope) to find exceptions to the general rule that statements made in mediation are inadmissible. However, Judge J. William Ditter of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania has held that some party statements can be admissible -- such as statements to the effect...
Hans Peter Frick, General Counsel of Nestlé, once offered this guidance for business mediators: You can either make what you think is a good candy bar and convince people that they "ought to" buy it, or you could go out and ask people what kind of candy bar they want, and...
The annual Conference of the International Bar Association in Vancouver presented several panels of unusual distinction and interest. This first report covers a group of speakers posing the questions: "What does it take to persuade? How does a lawyer cause an arbitrator, judge, businessperson or other lawyer, to willingly reach the...