Business Conflict Blog

I remember attending the first meeting of the Dispute Resolution Section of the American Bar Association, in Boston, in 1999. I was on a panel discussing Y2K, and absolutely everybody I had ever met in ADR was in attendance. Y2K has since moved on, but the ABA Dispute Resolution Section has grown and grown. It meets this year in Washington DC and the schedule is so full it’s like a three-ring circus: You attend one thing, all the time kicking yourself because you’re missing two others.

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Tags: ADR, ADR Institutions, Arbitration, Mediation

Molly Klapper’s book Definitive Creative Impasse-Breaking Techniques in Mediation features an insightful and practical contribution by Dwight Golann about “insulting” opening offers or demands.  He suggests why they are made, how they can be conveyed by a mediator, and how they can be converted to useful negotiations.

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Tags: Negotiation

The second post on Molly Klapper’s book, Definitive Creative Impasse-Breaking Techniques in Mediation, focuses on a deceptively simple and profoundly wise short essay by Laura Kaster, Addressing Impasse by Helping the Parties Value the Case.  She opens her piece with a “much overlooked but obvious” point:  “Settling or mediating a case is, among other things, a process for agreeing to the value of the claim. … Impasse often occurs precisely because the parties do not agree on the value of the case.”

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Tags: Mediation, Negotiation

As recently as a few weeks ago this blog noted the distinction between public and private negotiation.  Nevertheless, the current debate concerning raising the public debt “ceiling” seems to present a stark lesson on when to negotiate and when not to.

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Tags: Negotiation