Legal Educators’ Colloquium
April 21, 2012
Hyatt Regency Washington on Capitol Hill
Preliminary Agenda as of January 10th, 2012
Opening Program 8:00 – 9:20 am
Approaches to Scholarship in ADR
Research and writing is a challenge for any new law professor, and perhaps particularly so in ADR. From the scholar's perspective, ADR is both feast and famine: on the one hand, ADR scholars enjoy a wealth of relevant legal and interdisciplinary resources to consult, although these can sometimes be disorienting and difficult to manage well; on the other hand, many of us (unlike many of our our non-ADR colleagues) don’t have a steady supply of legal cases to interpret and work from. The field is accordingly both broad and narrow for the legal ADR academic, and framing one’s scholarship as “legal scholarship” can present its own set of difficulties, depending on the faculty context. This panel will explore the challenges in ADR scholarship by drawing on the experiences of several established ADR scholars. Topics will include establishing one's scholarly identity within ADR; choosing between specialty and general journals; deciding whether and how to collaborate; managing interdisciplinary sources and outside practice work; and positioning one's scholarship within the broader faculty context.
Michael Moffitt, University of Oregon School of Law, Eugene, OR
Andrea Schneider, Marquette University Law School, Milwaukee, WI
Jean Sternlight, William S. Boyd School of Law, Las Vegas, NV
Jen Reynolds, University of Oregon School of Law, Eugene, OR
Scott Peppet, The University of Colorado Law School, Boulder, CO
Legal Educators Colloquium - 1A 9:30 am – 10:45 am
Best Practices in Incorporating and Teaching Practical Problem-Solving in the Law School Curriculum
The Legal Education, ADR, and Problem-Solving (LEAPS) Task Force of the Section’s ADR in Law Schools Committee has been working in recent years to encourage and foster instruction of practical problem-solving (PPS) in law schools. PPS includes but is not limited to ADR. One of our projects has been to develop and organize panels of subject-area experts in the legal education community who would be available to consult with faculty who want advice about incorporating PPS elements into their non-ADR courses (e.g., civil procedure, contracts, etc.). In the session, we will: (1) update the audience as to the status of the Task Force’s work, including our most recent “community organizing” efforts; (2) present and distribute the outputs of the work completed to date, which will include “talking points” that audience members can use to address their colleagues’ concerns about integrating PPS in their courses (which we finalized following our 2011 LEC session) and the list of expert panels described above; and (3) describe several models of integration of PPS in the curriculum as well as “best practices” in incorporating PPS into law courses.
Jill Gross, Pace Law School, White Plains, NY
Jim Hilbert, William Mitchell College of Law, St. Paul, MN
John Lande, University of Missouri School of Law, Columbia, MO
J. Kim Wright, CuttingEdgeLaw.com, Asheville, NC
Legal Educators Colloquium 1B 9:30 am – 10:45 am
Teaching with Video, Using Open-Source Materials
The Section has created a website with multiple video resources for ADR teachers and trainers. The site allows you to stream excepts from leading ADR videos into your classroom, provides links to other sites with video, and gives advice about how to use video to support good teaching. In this session we'll show excerpts of video and discuss how to use them. We'll also show how students’ laptops can be used to record roleplay performances for later reflection and critique. The session will include interactive discussion to allow comments and ideas from the attendees.
Dwight Golann, Suffolk University Law School, Boston, MA
Peter Arcese, PVA Counsel, New York, NY
James Coben, Hamline University Law School, St Paul, MN
Legal Educators Colloquium 1C 9:30 am – 10:45 am
Integrating Legal Writing Skills Into ADR Courses
ADR courses commonly introduce students to the oral communication skills required in negotiation, mediation or arbitration. ADR practice, however, also requires effective legal writing skills. This program will address ways in which ADR professors can integrate graded written assignments in ADR survey, mediation and arbitration courses to help students develop practical legal writing skills. Panelists will discuss a wide range of writing opportunities that can be employed in ADR courses, such as arbitration or other dispute resolution contract provision, course journal, simulation exercise report, settlement agreement, or mediation statement drafting exercises. The program will cover ADR doctrinal, legal writing skills development and legal ethics pedagogical objectives as well as grading, substantive feedback, and course administration logistical challenges presented by integrating writing exercises into ADR courses. This will be an interactive program, with the panelists explaining how they use written exercises in their courses and encouraging comments from attendees about how they approach including written work product assignments in their ADR courses.
Ronald Aronovsky, Southwestern Law School, Los Angeles, CA
Kristen Blankley, University of Nebraska College of Law, Lincoln, NE
Sarah Cole, The Ohio State University Michael E. Moritz College of Law, Columbus, OH
Paul Kirgis, St. John's University School of Law, Jamaica, NY
Legal Educators Colloquium - 2A 11:00 am – 12:15 pm
Measuring Negotiation Learning: What do we know and how do we know it?
How do we know the way we teach negotiation in law school is having an impact on student performance? Over the past 35 years, negotiation courses have become prevalent in law schools, business schools and the private sector. Yet only a tiny percentage of these programs have attempted to measure the true impact of the teaching on negotiation effectiveness. This panel discussion will review the current state of negotiation teaching and learning evaluation, review a recent study measuring educational impacts, discuss new initiatives now being conducted, and propose future strategies for more effectively evaluating negotiation training courses and programs. We expect it to be an interactive discussion with the attendees to challenge them to think creatively about how they evaluate the actual ‘effectiveness’ of their teaching..
Martin Latz, Latz Negotiation Institute and ExpertNegotiator, LLC, Scottsdale, AZ
Charles B. Craver, George Washington University Law School, Washington, DC
Roy Lewicki, The Ohio State University - Fisher College of Business, Columbus, OH
Maureen Weston, Pepperdine University College of Law, Malibu, CA
Legal Educators Colloquium - 2B 11:00 am – 12:15 pm
Debriefing the Debrief
Debriefing is a crucial step in experiential learning and as such is central to teaching dispute resolution principles, negotiation, mediation, and other processes. The effectiveness of a simulation exercise or other learning activity depends to a great extent on the effectiveness of the debrief. Yet this process has not received as much attention as the design and implementation of simulation exercises. The panel will consider the challenges of debriefing with the goal of stimulating new thinking on designing and facilitating debriefings in the classroom and training workshops. The panel brings multiple perspectives from their experiences teaching and training, in law and other disciplines, in settings around the world. Topics will include the goals of conducting a debrief, its role in the learning process, and the characteristics of a good debrief. The panelists will discuss the challenges of debriefing, with input from the audience, and offer ideas for structuring and conducting a debrief that respond to those challenges. They will also discuss ways to tailor debriefing to the participants in the class or workshop and to adventure learning.
Ellen Deason, The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, Columbus, OH
Sharon Press, Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota
Ranse Howell, Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution, London, England United Kingdom (Great Britain)
Sanda Kaufman, Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, Ohio
Yael Efron, Zefat Academic College, School of Law, Zefat, none Israel
Legal Educators Colloquium - 2C 11:00 am – 12:15 pm
Client Science: What We’ve Learned From Teaching and Individual Coaching on How Best to Counsel Clients Through Legal Realities
Since 2004, University of Cincinnati Law has required that students take our Client Counseling course, teaching how to clearly communicate [legal concepts], deeply understand interests, work with psychology and emotion, and assist client decision-making under uncertainty. The course’s Final Counseling Skills Exercise (FCSE) involves individually recorded sessions, with student as lawyer, actor as client, and professor as coach. Each student must explain legal issues and process hurdles and seek the client’s authority to settle for far less than anticipated. Success is declared when client understands, feels comfortable with settlement, and retains confidence and trust in the lawyer. Having coached 700+students in effective phrasing, order, timing, and delivery, we’ve come to respect the deep difficulty of the FCSE. Using video and demonstrations, we’ll highlight what we’ve learned from struggling, stumbling, and trying again “where the rubber hits the road.” This includes insights from actors’ responses to phrasing and topic orders when their lawyers explain legal complexity and discuss settlement, as well as actors’ advice on voice, tone, and gesture to enhance rapport, trust, and gravitas. Finally, we’ll convey what we’ve learned about effective coaching in FCSE sessions. We’ll briefly discuss experiences with different course formats for delivery to large numbers.
Marjorie Aaron, University of Cincinnati College of Law, Cincinnati, OH
Richard Reuben, University of Missouri School of Law, Columbia, MO
Legal Educators Colloquium Shoptalk Programs 2:00 – 5:00 pm
Shop Talk 1 2:00 – 3:20 pm
Teaching Civil Discourse: What Is It and Where Does It Fit in the Law School Curriculum?
In August 2011, the ABA House of Delegates unanimously adopted Resolution 108 urging lawyers to use and become role models of civil discourse in public and democratic processes. It urged all bar sections, state, and local bar associations to undertake activities in support of the resolution. There are many models and processes for conducting civil and deliberative large group discussions among the public and stakeholders on matters of public policy. However, ADR survey courses generally do not address these processes. Where does civility currently fit within the law school curriculum? What should we teach about civil public dialogue? How should we teach it? Lisa Blomgren Bingham will introduce these processes through a discussion of collaborative governance and how civil and deliberative discourse relates to the process of making, implementing, and enforcing law and public policy. Nancy Thomas will report on a survey of graduate programs for deliberative democracy and civic discourses. She will briefly discuss the subject matter components for courses. For the remainder of the session, Bruce Meyerson will facilitate a discussion and participants will work in small groups to develop strategies for incorporating civility into the law school curriculum.
Lisa Blomgren Bingham, Las Vegas, NV
Nancy Thomas, The Democracy Imperative, Hartford, CT
Bruce E. Meyerson, Bruce Meyerson PLLC, Phoenix, AZ
Shop Talk 2 3:35 – 5:00 pm
Current Empirical Research on Contract-Based Arbitration: New Insights, Continuing Challenges
Participants will report on recent and forthcoming research on arbitration in consumer, employment and commercial settings, including their own projects and other recent initiatives. Among new findings: investors’ perceptions of and experiences with securities arbitration, the impact of gender on awards in securities cases, the latest on “repeat player” effects in different settings, the apparent dramatic drop-off in the use of arbitration by Fortune 1,000 companies, and other topics. Current challenges include the difficulty of obtaining reliable data; the role of contextual factors (including the transactional setting; the status or identity of disputants; the impact of counsel in dispute resolution; the rules governing arbitration and their provenance; as well as the quality of administration or regulation by the sponsoring institution); the need to compare arbitration to the “default option,” going to court; and identifying key parameters for measuring and comparing “due process” for consumers and employees.
Thomas J. Stipanowich, Pepperdine University School of Law, Malibu, CA
Barbara Black, University of Cincinnati School of Law, Cincinnati, OH
Alex Colvin, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
David Lipsky, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
Shop Talk 2 3:35 – 5:00 pm
Multiple Perspectives on Student Competitions in Dispute Resolution
Recent years have seen marked growth in the number and variety of interscholastic competitions in dispute resolution. From Client Counseling to ICC Arbitration, Negotiation to the FINRA Triathalon (and many places in between), law students enjoy an array of alternatives to more litigation-based Moot Court or Mock Trial Competitions. These DR-related competitions can be an important piece of the bridge connecting classroom theory and real-world practice. Preparing for the competitions gives students the opportunity build skills, collaborate with fellow students, and work more closely with coaches (whether faculty or practicing lawyers from nearby communities). Nonetheless, some teachers of ADR feel some misgivings about the very structure and underlying value system when a student activity is framed as a "competition." Are we satisfied with the criteria used to assess student performance and confident that judges consistently apply those criteria? Do students come home from the competitions with their priorities and commitments intact? What alternatives might exist to deliver some of the benefits of competitions with fewer potential downsides? These questions will be the focus of our discussion.
Jennifer Brown, Quinnipiac University School of Law, Hamden, CT
David Larson, Hamline University Law School, Saint Paul, MN
Nancy Welsh, Penn State Law, University Park, PA
