This post comes from the island of Luzon, in the Philippines, where a team from the Corporate Social Responsibility Project of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government has worked on a film documenting the tensions between operators of two hydroelectric dams and the communities that were inundated, destroyed and displaced during the...
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....
A sobering -- even frightening -- panel at the IBA's Vancouver conference addressed negotiation in volatile, politically charged and dangerous circumstances -- pushing the boundaries of mediation past the purely commercial, into a world where lives may depend on the skill and success of the negotiator or mediator. Maritime pirates off...
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...
"You'd better be careful -- you're about to negotiate with the King!" We've all heard this at some point in our careers. Our counterparty is well-connected with the judge. He's an influential member of the local bar. He has fifty years' worth of hard-earned reputation as the lion of the district. ...
Many parties in mediation -- and many of their counsel -- consider that a "win" is a deal that gets them the number they asked for, or close to it. In fact that's not so, and a mediator provides important value to disputants by assisting them to determine, in a...