(Spoiler Alert: This week's blog has nothing to do with mediation!) As the then chair and now the immediate past chair of the California State Bar ADR committee, I have had the pleasure of meeting and getting to know Joanna Mendoza, a trustee on the Board of Trustees and liaison to the [Read More]
In 2006, the American Bar Association issued an ethical opinion- ABA Formal Ethics Op. 06-439 entitled A Lawyer’s Obligation of Truthfulness When Representing a Client in Negotiation: Application to Caucused Negotiation. At issue was whether an attorney has to be as truthful in a caucused mediation as she is obliged [Read More]
In most disputes, when people get angry- it is a bad sign! It usually means that the dispute will NOT get resolved, and that one or the other party will leave in a huff. Indeed, neuroscience teaches us that when the parts of our brain that control our emotions are operating [Read More]
Are you in awe? Probably not… but, according to a recent article in the Sunday New York Times (“Why Do We Experience Awe? “By Paul Piff and Dacher Keltner-May 24, 2015), we should be. According to research to be published in the June issue of the Journal of Personality and [Read More]
Recently I read an article about two lawyers assaulting each other during a deposition being conducted in the courthouse. The article, dated April 30, 2015 and printed in NorthJersey.com explains: Two attorneys were arrested and charged with simple assault on Wednesday after they got into a heated dispute that turned [Read More]
Recently, the Kluwer Mediation Blog posted an interesting discussion about the cognitive biases at play during a dispute. What caught my interest is that the author- Charlie Irvine- used the example of driving to make his point. In his blog entitled, “What Mediators Know (Or Can’t Help Noticing) about Conflict" [Read More]
On January 11, 2013, I posted a blog entitled "A Mediator's Wish List" which discussed a letter to Santa Claus in which the author, a mediator, asked for three gifts: perspective and understanding; empathy and connection; and forgiveness and healing. (a-mediators-wish-list ) The letter appeared in the January 2013 issue [Read More]
The Sunday New York Times Magazine of January 6, 2013 published an interesting article on restorative justice entitled; " Can Forgiveness play a role in criminal justice?" by Paul Tullis.(can-forgiveness-play-a-role-in-criminal-justice.html?_r=1&&pagewanted=all ) The article chronicles the highly unusual approach taken by the victim's parents in the prosecution of the wrongdoer. The [Read More]
