Just before Molly Klapper’s recent and much-mourned death, the New York State Bar Association released a wonderful book she had worked hard to edit: Definitive Creative Impasse-Breaking Techniques in Mediation. The volume contains many useful contributions from extraordinarily accomplished mediators and trainers. This and the following posts will highlight some of the best ones.
The Annual Conference of the International Bar Association opened on Sunday night October 30, 2011, with an address by Mohamed ElBaradei, former Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency and, with the IAEA, 2005 Nobel laureate. He focused on the dynamic state of the Middle East and addressed both the rule of law as an incentivizing influence on the creation of the society in which we want to live, and the role of the lawyer as social engineer. Read more »
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.
A recent article has been making the rounds of ADR professionals. The current issue of the American Psychological Association’s publication Psychology, Public Policy and Law (Vol. 16, No. 2, at 133-57) features a report of a study conducted by a group of scholars from Australia, Sweden and the United States. The group canvassed 481 American attorneys – in civil and criminal cases, both plaintiffs/prosecutors and defense – and found that lawyers are prone to overconfidence. That is, they predict outcomes of their cases that are not only erroneous, but generally too optimistic.
I’m wondering why this is news. I think that we mediators have known this all along; in fact, that’s why we’re hired. Read more »
