Many decades ago, when I was in law school, I learned about the “ripeness doctrine” in my Constitutional law course. Simply stated, this doctrine limits the power of a federal court to adjudicate cases that might otherwise fall within its jurisdiction. It concerns ““the timing of judicial intervention and prevents [Read More]
It is funny how sometimes the stars align to suddenly highlight an issue that was nowhere in my conscious brain before then. Last night, I received an emergency e mail asking if I could help a fellow professor with her class tonight. I looked at my schedule and found I [Read More]
The Harvard Negotiation PON’s recent blog raises an interesting issue: in a negotiation should you set a goal? In “The Anchoring Effect and How It Can Impact Your Negotiation”, it answers “yes”. Noting that the “anchoring effect is a cognitive bias that describes the common human tendency to rely too [Read More]
I now know why I traded in the very uncivil world of civil litigation for mediation; it is destructive… and nothing really good comes out of it. I say this because I just mediated a post settlement dispute that was about to end in court the next morning as an [Read More]
At a certain point in almost every negotiation and every mediation, the parties get stuck; they hit impasse or a bump in the road. Recently, I attended a training with Professor Carrie Menkel- Meadow. In one of her handouts, she discussed ways to creatively solve the issues. They include: 1. [Read More]
In many mediations (including those I have conducted), there comes a point when the parties are at an impasse: they are stymied in reaching a settlement. The plaintiff wants more, and the defendant believes it has already offered too much. The parties want to settle but do not know how [Read More]
I conducted a mediation recently that had all of the ingredients for failure (as discussed in last week's blog) from the very start. It was a wage and hour case in which the plaintiff claimed, among other things, that she worked long hours for which she was not adequately paid, [Read More]
I came across a 2009 blog the other day written by Anthony K. Tjan for the Harvard Business Review. It contains 4 simple rules for effective negotiations; reading through them- I found them to be old friends; rules that I have discussed before in my blogs: 1. Be prepared. Mr. [Read More]
