Business Conflict Blog

It is curious that, as formal training in private negotiation increases, the quality of public negotiation has fallen into such disrepair. 

Business people negotiating a private deal are trained to listen attentively, in order to discover their counterparty’s interests, and to devise beneficial options that accomodate them.  Yet listening is something one seldom observes in public legislative debate.  Adjusting one’s view on the basis of what one hears, practically never.

Why is that?  And might the ADR community have something to contribute to encourage creative negotiation of matters of public interest?  The Council of the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution seems to have something to say about both those questions.

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Tags: Culture, Lawyers, Negotiation

One of the most in-demand items at the ABA Annual Meeting was a seat at the Moscone Center for the panel titled “Shaping the Law: A Solicitor’s General Roundtable.”  The misplaced apostrophe notwithstanding, it was enlightening and a lot of fun.

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Tags: Public Policy

In his keynote address to the Section of Dispute Resolution of the American Bar Association, MIT Professor Lawrence Susskind urged that it was time for ADR professionals to get involved in the failure of meaningful discourse in American public life, and to assist people to talk to each other about deeply held beliefs.  He focused on disputes that arise “when people describe who they are rather than what they want” and outlined an approach to dispute resolution that is distinct from the familiar Fisher/Ury interest-based model.

The underlying assumptions of interest-based facilitation — that the parties have interests, know their BATNAs, will seek maximum return without unnecessary delay, and will accept an agreement whose terms are better than no agreement – don’t work when people’s values, or their very identities, at at stake.  Abortion or same-sex marriage are not interests, or even principles; they define who some people are.  When these defining values are encroached upon or attacked, what facilitation model applies?  Read more »

Tags: Culture, Mediation, Negotiation

The International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution (CPR Institute) has very seldom taken a position in amicus briefs or on pending legislation.  But its Board of Directors recently posted a 22-page letter to the leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees “to voice out concern over the Arbitration Fairness Act of 2009.”  When the Sphinx speaks I guess we’d better listen.

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Tags: ADR Institutions, Arbitration, Public Policy