Lawsuits are products. I know this sounds strange particularly to lawyers who after four years of college, three years of law school and then one or more bar examinations, do not want to consider themselves mere sales people (like the used car sales person?) but that is what we are: [Read More]
An article last month in the New York Times got me thinking that perhaps in my mediations, I should warn people that their memories and perceptions may be unreliable, especially where the situation involves parties of different ethnicities. In To Curb Bad Verdicts, Court Adds Lesson on Racial Bias for [Read More]
In October 2015, I posted a blog about a then recent New York Times article on the benefits of anger in negotiations. In “The Rationality of Rage”, Matthew Hudson reviewed then recent studies indicating that in a balanced negotiation, anger tends to provide some leverage; it helped the angry negotiator [Read More]
In 2005, the American Bar Association together with other organizations, adopted the Model Standards of Conduct for Mediators. Standard 1 entitled “Self Determination” defines it as … the act of coming to a voluntary, uncoerced decision in which each party makes free and informed choices as to process and outcome. [Read More]
The other day, I received a telephone call from an attorney wondering if I could conduct a mediation on very short notice. It seems that the parties had a trial date in less than three weeks and wanted to make another attempt at settling the matter. They had already been [Read More]
I stumbled across an article about a case filed in court, Jane Doe v Proskauer Rose LLP., U.S. District Court (D. C.), case No. 1:17-cv-00910-ABJ, that absolutely intrigues me as a mediator. Using the pseudonym Jane Doe, a female partner in the law firm's District of Columbia office sued the [Read More]
A few weeks ago, I posted a blog about a subrogation matter which I mediated. The facts were not complicated: A homeowner parked her vehicle in her garage in her home and the next thing she knew, the garage caught fire and there was extensive smoke damage throughout the house. [Read More]
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]
