One of the first things I Iearned about in game theory was the prisoner’s dilemma. As explained in Wikipedia, this theory was developed in 1950 by Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher while working at the RAND corporation. It explains why two rational beings may not cooperate even though it is [Read More]
I just obtained a teaching position as a Lecturer of Law (aka adjunct professor) at University of Southern California Gould School of Law teaching the mediation ethics portion of an ADR Ethics class. One of the issues we will be discussing is the conflicting goals of the participants (that is, [Read More]
While everyone agrees that it is always best to have the actual parties and counsel physically present at a mediation, this is not always possible. Often, the plaintiff may appear by telephone and at times, I may not even be able to speak to the plaintiff but only to her [Read More]
If you have not yet figured it out, this notion of “alternative facts” intrigues me. (This is my third blog about it!) I think it is because as a mediator, I witness “alternative facts” quite frequently. No party is “lying” to me; in telling her story to me, she is simply [Read More]
In the context of a marital dissolution proceeding, is there (or should there be) an exception to mediation confidentiality (California Evidence Code section 1119) for financial disclosures “prepared for the purpose of” and used “in the course of … the mediation?” (Evidence Code section 1119). The Legislature believes so; On [Read More]
The other day, I came upon a blog post from the Program on Negotiation (PON) at Harvard Law School that is worth discussing. It is entitled “10 Hard Bargaining Negotiation Tactics” by Keith Lutz (January 10, 2017). I have seen one or more of these tactics often in mediation and [Read More]
I saw a blog on the Program on Negotiation (PON) at Harvard Law School’s web page written by its staff (January 12, 2017) entitled “How Mood Affects Negotiators”. It caught my attention because I had just witnessed this effect in two of my mediations. Recently, I held two mediations on [Read More]
Not everyone lives the way we do. And just because someone may do things very differently than we might does not mean that what he alleges as happening is false. In social psychology circles, this tendency to discount others who do not share our world view is called “naïve realism” [Read More]
