Guest blogger Josh Nevas is the Ropes & Gray Negotiation and Mediation Fellow at HNMCP.
When I tell people that I work at the Harvard Negotiation & Mediation Clinical Program (HNMCP), the most common response is, “Wow, that sounds interesting! [Brief pause] So…what exactly do you folks do there?”
The short answer is that HNMCP offers classroom courses focusing on the theory and practice of conflict management and dispute systems design as well as clinical projects, in which teams of students apply their negotiation, conflict resolution, and systems design skills to real-world issues that the clinic’s clients are facing. The clinic’s client list spans an incredibly diverse range of organizations, including domestic and international NGOs, state and federal government agencies, religious institutions, international corporations, and even a professional sports team. Over the course of this academic year, students have worked on, or are currently working on, projects in China, Thailand, Poland, Ireland, and across the United States, from New Jersey to California. The range of issues students may tackle is as diverse as its client list, and might include assessing the causes of, and stakeholders in, a large and complex conflict, mediating an ongoing conflict through to its resolution, designing and helping to implement a new organizational dispute management system for a client, or providing strategic negotiation and dispute resolution consulting.
Of course, that’s just the view from 30,000 feet—I could go on for quite a long time describing all of the interesting, innovative things that are going on here at HNMCP. But, thanks to the power of the internet, we’ve got an entire website for that. So, if anything I’ve mentioned sounds interesting, I strongly encourage you to check out the clinic’s website here. You can read about the clinic’s past and current projects in detail, learn about the clinic’s course offerings, read profiles of the clinic’s faculty and staff, and check out the student organizations affiliated with the clinic.
However, one thing that our website can’t do is give you a personal flavor for what it’s like to work at HNMCP. Maybe that’s where I can help—I’ll give you a quick “insider’s tour” of HNMCP. By which, I mean that I’ll wander around the office for a few minutes and give you a rundown of who’s here and what they’re up to at the moment:
Stephan Sonnenberg (HLS ’06) has the office next to mine, so he’s up first. Stephan’s a Clinical Fellow and Lecturer on Law who teaches a course on international human rights and conflict resolution in the fall, is an instructor for the Negotiation Workshop in the spring, and manages student clinical projects throughout the year. He just finished meeting with a team of clinical students, with whom he spent the last couple of weeks in Thailand, assessing the situation at a refugee camp on the Thai-Burma border. Now, Stephan’s helping the students use their findings to develop recommendations for improving the camp’s conflict-management system. He’s also the only person in the office who drinks more coffee than I do (and that’s saying something!).
The next office down belongs to Professor Bob Bordone (HLS ‘97), the Director of HNMCP. Bob, who happened to be my Negotiation instructor when I was a student here, teaches an advanced seminar on Dispute Systems Design and a clinical seminar that focuses on helping students apply their negotiation and dispute resolution skills to their individual clinical projects. Bob is also the head of the spring negotiation teaching team, which teaches five sections of Negotiation Workshop.
At the moment, Bob’s meeting with his Teaching Assistant, Toby, to prepare for the Interpersonal Skills Exercise that he’ll be doing with his students today. In the exercise (“IPS,” for short), students receive feedback and coaching from HLS faculty on how to improve on critical negotiation skills. Like many students who take the Negotiation Workshop, I found IPS to be one of the most intense, and most rewarding, elements of my entire law school experience. Now that I’m observing it from the other side, I can see that the process is as demanding (and perhaps as rewarding) for the instructors as it is for the students!
Tracy Blanchard is the Program Assistant for HNMCP. Right now, she’s uploading a clip from Bob’s recent CNN interview on Congressional health care negotiations to the “News and Articles” section of the web site. In addition to keeping our site updated, she helps get students to exotic locales like Thailand and Mississippi, makes sure our bills get paid, fools around on our Facebook site, and various other things that make the clinic run. Also, she patiently laughs at my dumb jokes, for which I’m extremely grateful.
Matt Smith’s (HLS ’05) office is the next one down the hall. Like Stephan, Matt’s a Clinical Fellow and Lecturer on Law. In addition to managing student clinical projects, he co-teaches the clinical seminar with Bob and is an instructor for the Negotiation Workshop. At the moment, he’s watching video clips on YouTube. However, Matt assures me that, had I walked in a minute earlier, I would have found him hard at work on tomorrow’s Negotiation Workshop lecture, which focuses on client interviewing and counseling. Matt has also kindly reminded me that, instead of walking around the office spying on people for my blog post, I might want to spend my time reviewing and typing up comments to the negotiation simulation that I promised to help him edit two weeks ago. Touché, Matt. Moving on…
So, now that we’re back in my office, and ready to wrap up this blog post, I should probably tell you a little about myself. I’m the Ropes & Gray Negotiation & Mediation Fellow here at HNMCP. After graduating from HLS in 2007, I spent two years as an associate at the law firm of Ropes & Gray, in Boston. Last spring, I was granted a year-long fellowship through Ropes’ New Alternatives Program and jumped at the chance to return to HLS and work with Bob. After I finish this blog post, I’ll be meeting with a second-year student to review some materials that we’ll be using as part of a negotiation skills and strategy presentation that we’ll be delivering to legislators and business leaders affiliated with the NAACP in mid-April in Jackson, Mississippi.
I hope this brief glimpse into life at HNMCP has given you a little better sense of who we are and just what it is we do here. Whether we’re teaching negotiation skills to a student or designing a dispute resolution system for a corporation, we strive to bring a spirit of creativity, innovation, and enthusiasm to everything we do at HNMCP.
– Josh
