HNCMP Newsletter - Volume VI - Issue I

Letter from the Director

Dear Friends of HNMCP,

As we begin this new year, we reflect on the past with gratitude and look to the future with hope. In 2012, the Harvard Negotiation & Mediation Clinical Program (HNMCP) grew its programs and personnel, continuing to enhance ADR offerings for Harvard Law School students. In 2013, we will honor those who have made this work possible, especially Roger Fisher, while we continue to expand HNMCP’s impact.

In late 2012, the ADR community, and Harvard in particular, lost a master in the field. Professor Roger D. Fisher ‘48 shaped the basis for much of the negotiation work now possible at HLS. In many ways, Roger’s contribution to negotiation pedagogy impacts HNMCP. He experimented with new teaching methods, the use of simulations and video, and intensive personalized feedback. Even with twenty years of innovation since Roger’s retirement, the HLS “Negotiation Workshop”—in which HNMCP instructors teach today—remains one of his enduring gifts to HLS. On March 2, 2013, the Harvard Negotiation Law Review will honor Roger’s legacy by making his work the focus of its annual symposium.

HNMCP’s slate of fall 2012 projects addressed dispute systems in varied contexts. A Boston-based not-for-profit serving Somali youth partnered with HNMCP students to design a training program on negotiating with parents across generations and cultures. Another student team continued our work with Seeds of Peace, an organization supporting teens in areas of high conflict. Other projects assisted government entities from the Canadian Ministry of Justice to New York City officials. You can read more about these successful projects in this issue.

We continue to see a growing interest in ADR, both from our students and from the world outside the HLS classroom. The culminating project for this fall’s “Multiparty Negotiation Workshop” involved providing strategic negotiation advice to senior officials at Major League Baseball.  Two weeks before the Presidential election, a team of HNMCP students and staff co-facilitated conversations in a local Catholic parish focused on faith and citizenship. In January HLS was honored to have internationally acclaimed mediator and dispute systems design expert Kenneth Feinberg teaching our first-ever “Advanced Dispute Systems Design: The 9/11 and BP Oil Spill Funds and Alternatives to the Tort System.” Attendance at our lunchtime discussion series, Negotiation in the News, increased as did the waiting list for our clinic and for the Winter and Spring semester negotiation workshops.

Thanks to the support of HLS Dean Martha Minow, we were able to add a new clinical fellow to our team. Heather Scheiwe Kulp joined us in the fall and will work with ADR-related student practice organizations while undertaking special projects. You can read more about Heather in this issue, along with the variety of ways HNMCP staff members bring their expertise to the world at large in our new “On the Road” column.

We hope 2013 is a year of health, joy, and happiness.

Warmly,

Client Spotlight: The Institute for Inclusion in the Legal Profession

CLIENT SPOTLIGHT:

Sandra Yamate ’84
Audrey Lee ’05

The Institute for Inclusion in the Legal Profession

The Institute for Inclusion in the Legal Profession (IILP) is a not-for-profit organization that, through educational programs, research and publications, addresses the lack of diversity and inclusion that continues to challenge the legal profession and undermine its credibility within the justice system. It seeks to change walls into doors in the areas of race, ethnicity, color, culture, gender, nationality, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, religion, geography and age.

 

 

 

Audrey Lee

HNMCP: This is our second project with IILP. How did you initially hear about the Clinic?

Sandra Yamate: We learned about you through Audrey Lee, a consultant who has particular expertise in communications issues and with whom we enjoy working. She received her initial negotiation training as a student at HLS and spoke highly of the training that the Clinic offered.

HNMCP: What made you decide that our clinic might be helpful in supporting your work challenging “walls of uniformity” in the legal profession? Were there other options you considered?

SY: We’re a relatively young organization and still growing. As a result, we have to choose the projects on which we work carefully. We look for areas in which we can have meaningful impact and offer significant opportunities for effective, positive and practical strategic improvement. The Clinic’s design and structure met those requirements. It seemed an ideal partner with which to address particular needs within the legal profession in a way that would not be threatening but would, instead, offer reliable, concrete, and pragmatic ways to handle common situations facing law firms that rarely get addressed, much less in such a thorough way.

HNMCP: What were the most important issues to make sure were addressed in this project?

Audrey Lee: There were quite a few, including:

• Establishing common terminology and definitions for all the participants;
• Helping the students to appreciate and learn to work within the large law firm culture and communicate to large law firm leaders in ways that prove useful to all;
• Keeping the project focused so as to help the students differentiate between their work and its cutting edge nature and the more traditional and common diversity consulting that is available.

HNMCP: What were the attractions of working with students at HLS? What were your concerns about working with students?

SY: The HLS students took the project very seriously. If we had any concerns, it was that being students, it might be difficult to help them move beyond the traditional diversity consultant type of work that can be more obvious and common but also with which they had less authority and experience. We were impressed by how they were able to grasp the nuances that made this project much more fulsome and cutting edge and thus more useful and meaningful.

HNMCP: What were some of the challenges for IILP as the project progressed?

AL: Our greatest challenge was that the students were so enthused and had such energy, it wasn’t always easy to keep up with them in terms of how quickly things were getting updated and turned around for our review and comment.

HNMCP: What was fun and interesting for you in this process? What was your favorite part of the project?

SY: It’s always working with the students and seeing how excited they get when they begin to realize—not just intellectually, but emotionally—that the work they are doing is going to have significant impact in some of the world’s largest law firms and that, if they choose to spend any or part of their careers in a large law firm, this research could impact them, too.

My favorite part is when the students make their oral presentations to the law firms. They get nervous. We get nervous. But when they start seeing how their work is being received, the kinds of in-depth analysis it is sparking for these law firm leaders, and the response it generates, it produces the most amazing rush of adrenalin.

HNMCP: What was the biggest surprise for you as the students began to inform you about the data they collected through interviews, etc?

AL: It was hearing how interesting the students found their findings. Much of their data and findings wasn’t particularly surprising to us, but seeing it dawn on them about what large law firm practice could really be like was fascinating.

HNMCP: What tangible results are you hoping will unfold for IILP and for the law firms the students have worked with?

AL: I hope that we’re going to see more law firms beginning to address the role that communications is playing in their recruitment, retention, and promotion to partnership of lawyers who are women, minorities, openly LGBT, or who have disabilities.

HNMCP: What else would you like to share about the experience of working with HNMCP ?

SY: HNMCP may be a student clinic but its work is easily on par or surpasses the work of professional management consultants. Indeed, I think the end products—what the consultants call “take aways”—may actually be superior as a result of the passion that the students bring to their work. We cannot say enough good things about HNMCP.

Sandra S. Yamate ’84 is the Chief Executive Officer of the Institute for Inclusion in the Legal Profession. She has served as the Director of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Profession and was the first Executive Director of the Chicago Committee on Minorities in Large Law Firms. Prior to that, Sandra was a litigator in Chicago for ten years. She helped found the Asian American Institute, the National Women’s Political Caucus of Metropolitan Chicago, the Asian American Bar Association of the Greater Chicago Area (of which she is a past president), the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, and Asian Americans for Inclusive Education. She serves as the newsletter editor for the ABA Section of International Law’s Diversity Committee. Sandra earned her JD from Harvard Law School as well as an AB in Political Science (cum laude) and History (magna cum laude) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa

 

Audrey J. Lee ’05 is the Principal of Perspectiva LLC. As a negotiation and conflict management consultant, Audrey works with clients to strengthen their capacity to manage conflict and key relationships more effectively. Her clients include The Cambridge Group, Jenner & Block LLP, the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism, Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP, Exponent Failure Analysis Associates, Winston & Strawn LLP, and the Office of the Illinois Attorney General. She has also worked with clients to equip course presenters with the skills necessary to facilitate interactive courses and has taught several Facilitation Workshops using the Train-the-Trainer approach. Audrey is an instructor for the Harvard Negotiation Institute and a Lecturer in the Department of Conflict Resolution at UMass. She has also taught at Northwestern University School of Law and DePaul University College of Law. Prior to her consulting work, Audrey practiced law as an intellectual property and litigation attorney at Winston & Strawn in Chicago and Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York. Audrey is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School.

Student Spotlight: Danielle Bart ’13

STUDENT PROFILE:
Danielle Bart ’13

HNMCP Project: U.S. Dept. of Transportation/Volpe National Transportation System Center

HNMCP: Danielle, you’re going to be a teaching assistant in the “Negotiation Workshop” this spring. You’ve taken the “Negotiation Workshop,” “Dispute Systems Design” and the “Multiparty Negotiation Workshop,” as well as the Negotiation & Mediation Clinic (HNMCP). All this indicates a fairly deep interest in alternative dispute resolution. What is it about this work that peaks your interest?

Danielle Bart: From the 1L problem-solving workshop onward, law school is about dealing with tricky issues. In more traditional classes we get tools for dealing with interesting legal problems, and clinics help us apply those to real situations. What I love about the negotiation program is that it widens the scope of problem-solving. For me, negotiation goes beyond the tricky legal questions. It focuses on the motivating factors, wider issues, and personalities that surround a problem, and looks for a solution that is collaborative and that addresses its context. That’s a really satisfying process to take part in, and I think it can bring about more creative and durable solutions.   

HNMCP: So I guess despite the range of clinic options available at Harvard Law School that made HNMCP an obvious choice?

DB: The clinic seemed like a natural choice for me. I was hoping to get really instructive, practical experience applying negotiation principles and skills, and I got it! Negotiation is challenging in a classroom setting, so predictably, having real people and problems to work with really increases the level of engagement you have to have. What’s more, there is extra motivation to be rigorous in your work. Unlike many other kinds of legal work, a client in negotiation can immediately assess your analysis of their situation. If your description of a party’s interests or of a relationship dynamic doesn’t resonate, or if it isn’t entirely consistent with their reality, the client will let you know. So you have to be incredibly attentive and nuanced in your assessments in order to build the client’s trust and confidence, as well as to provide strong foundation for your recommendations. There’s a necessary level of closeness and accountability there that makes the work really exciting.

HNMCP: What was interesting and what was challenging about the clinic in general and your project in particular?

DB: Perhaps the most fascinating thing about the clinic was the range of projects. That semester the projects covered everything from advising government agencies on how to expand their ADR departments to helping create an avant garde online ADR interface. Seeing how the core set of principles was used on those diverse problems over the semester was amazing, and very educational.

The other interesting element of the clinic is the extent to which it’s an exercise in learning to work with other people. You spend a lot of time with your clinic team, and you have to be effective together from early on. We were given assignments expressly designed to help our teams create and maintain a supportive and efficient dynamic. It’s fascinating to me that working with others is such a necessary part of professional life, yet there’s so little instruction that is meant to explicitly develop skills for doing it well. I appreciated that aspect—it was an unexpected part of the clinic and a really great bonus.

With regard to challenges, a major issue for my project was dealing with strong, entrenched, intergroup dynamics between the different stakeholders involved. Before the clinic, I don’t think I understood on a visceral level how deeply embedded institutional cultures can be. Even in cases where the parties are interested and willing to change their patterns of interaction, as in our project, creating lasting behavioral change takes time. We did our best to create structures and mechanisms for helping the parties reach that goal.

HNMCP: How do you think your clinic experience will inform your future work?

DB: In terms of future work, I have two main takeaways from the clinic. The first has to do with working in a team and being deliberate about creating an effective, and pleasant, working group. The second has to do with the interaction between problem-solving goals, associated structural solutions, and long-term relationships. In my clinic project, the parties had an industrial accident-reporting system that basically allocated blame and meted out punishment when things went wrong, and it created strong incentives for behavior that defeated the goal of the system, which was to increase safety. Not only that, the structure fed into growing antagonism between the different stakeholders, and it affected their other interactions. Working on the project really showed me that as (proto-) lawyers, the solutions we provide for clients aren’t finite—they’re part of a longer chain of relationships and events. Depending on how the solution is crafted, today’s problem-solving result can be tomorrow’s problem, or it can help the client reach more productive outcomes. I think it’s important to keep that in mind, especially in more adversarial contexts.

Alumna Spotlight: Alexia Bertrand LLM ’05

ALUMNA PROFILE:
Alexia Bertrand LLM ‘05

Advisor to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and European Affairs and Deputy-Prime Minister of Belgium

I had no clue what a negotiation class actually implied before studying at Harvard Law School. Aside from one or two MBA programs, no university in Belgium offered a negotiation class at the time I pursued my law degree. I was a business lawyer when I arrived at HLS, dedicated to negotiating acquisitions, financing agreements, and other corporate documents. How could I not sign up for the “Negotiation Workshop”?

The workshop proved to be an amazing experience. On the one hand, it put words and concepts on behaviors I had naturally been adopting—setting a process at the outset, naming the game when confronted with hard bargaining tactics, asserting my interests. On the other hand it provided me with a framework to analyze my negotiations and a whole new toolbox from which to draw. Brainstorming with my counter-parties, changing the players when at an impasse, and applying value creation where possible are only a few examples of the skills I learned at HLS and still use today.

After the workshop I took “Negotiation Advanced: Deals” with Professor Guhan Subramanian. This course illustrated negotiation concepts applied to the business world. After graduation, I returned twice as a teaching assistant for the “Negotiation Workshop,” first with Linda Netsch, then with Professor Robert Mnookin. These remain among the most rewarding professional experiences I’ve had.

After practicing for eight years as a business lawyer in an international law firm, I decided to give my career a new spin by taking up a job as Advisor to the Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Deputy-Prime Minister, Didier Reynders. I am responsible for all matters related to justice, asylum, and migration, as well as a few economic matters.

Belgium is a rather intricate country when it comes to its political structure. Its unique federal system must support components that reflect both various linguistic communities (French, Dutch, German) and various economic regions (Flanders, Wallonia, Brussels). These, combined with Belgium’s proportional representation voting system, keep our politicians in continuous negotiation. Our federal government counts six different parties—three representing the Dutch-speaking Belgians and three representing the French-speaking Belgians—and therefore six Deputy-Prime Ministers, who, along with the Prime Minister, are responsible for the most delicate decisions within our government.

As an Advisor to Deputy-Prime Minister Reynders, I negotiate with the six other ministers’ Advisors on each draft bill that is proposed by the government in the areas of justice, asylum, migration, or economic affairs to ensure it is in line with the values of the liberal party. One of the main challenges of the role is to find a value-creating agreement within the mandate received. Liberals, socialists and Christian-democrats, Flemish- and French-speaking representatives all have to come to an agreement they can sell to their constituents. Thus I think the Belgians have an embedded culture of negotiation. The result is often unexpected, complex, multilayered and may involve a renegotiation a few years later. This is what we refer to as a “Belgian compromise.” The Belgians’ negotiation skills prove particularly useful in the European context and put us at the forefront of many complex European negotiations.

Recently I and the other Advisors were involved in a discussion on the position Belgium was to adopt in an EU-level negotiation with a non-member state. A few EU countries had taken a stricter view on a particular issue and wanted to express this in a non-paper (an off-the-record or unofficial presentation of policy) to the Commission. As we discussed whether Belgium should add its signature to the non-paper, most government parties expressed willingness. However, one party did not want to associate Belgium with the member states on the non-paper because these same member states had, in their view, taken a disturbing position towards the non-member state on another, unrelated topic. They feared Belgium could be perceived as agreeing with their position on that other topic if it signed the non-paper. As the debate became more animated, a few advisors suggested simply deferring the question to the Ministers. Believing us capable of finding a solution within our group, I initiated a brainstorming session. The group eventually came up with a value-creating solution—to write its own non-paper that would literally be a copy-paste of that of the other member states. This met all parties’ interests of sticking to our message on the substance while avoiding any amalgamation on our position on the unrelated topic.

This example points to the myriad ways my HLS negotiation training is invaluable in my everyday life. It also fundamentally changed the way I interpret certain behaviors. I can now accept what I would previously have labeled “bad faith” as simply a different perception of reality by my counter-parties, an approach invaluable in the political life.

Alexia Bertrand is an Advisor to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Deputy-Prime Minister of Belgium, Didier Reynders, in matters related to justice, asylum, and migration. She also serves on the Counsel of her municipality. Before entering the political world, she practiced for several years as a business lawyer, and was a member of both the New York and Brussels bars. She worked first with Clifford Chance, then with Linklaters in the area of corporate advising with a focus on public mergers and acquisitions for listed companies. Alexia served as a teaching and research assistant in Corporations at the Université Catholique de Louvain and participated to the launching of the first “Negotiation Workshop” by Prof. Alain Verbeke at the law faculty of the Katholieke Universteit Leuven. She taught in the “Negotiation Workshop” at HLS, at the Amsterdam’s ADR Institute, for the European Commission, and for several companies. She earned her law degree from the Université Catholique de Louvain and holds an LLM from Harvard Law School. She has also studied at the Universidad Pontificia Comillas in Madrid.

Fall 2012 Projects

African Community and Economic Development of New England (ACEDONE)

ACEDONE was founded in 2002 to provide support to Boston’s East African community and families as they integrate into American society. Tensions between old world and new can exacerbate the already challenging teen/parent relationship. ACEDONE has enlisted HNMCP to report on the underlying causes of such tensions in the Somali community, and to recommend techniques and develop a curriculum for effective conflict management.

Read more about our project with ACEDONE here.

Read a story about the training with Somali youth here.

 

British Columbia Ministry of Justice 

The Ministry of Justice’s Dispute Resolution Office (DRO) develops and promotes non-adversarial dispute resolution options within the justice system and government. It has introduced multiple initiatives that leverage the benefits of technology in this context. The DRO’s project with HNMCP considered the role of technology-based “expert systems” to replace the analysis and actions of humans in the areas of triaging disputes, helping parties find pertinent information or prepare for further negotiation, and, optimally, facilitating an early resolution to conflict.

Read more about our project with the BC Ministry of Justice here.

 

The Institute for Inclusion in the Legal Profession and an Am Law 100 Firm

The Institute for Inclusion in the Legal Profession (IILP) and an Am Law 100 firm recruited HNMCP to conduct a stakeholder assessment to better understand the firm’s current systems for handling internal disputes, disagreements, and misunderstandings that involve diversity and inclusion. HNMCP examined issues around race, gender, ethnicity, religion, disability, and LGBT issues and suggested improvements to current systems.

Read more about our project with IILP and an Am Law 100 firm here.

 

Internal Revenue Service Office of Appeals

The Internal Revenue Service’s Office of Appeals (IRSOA) serves as the administrative forum for any taxpayer contesting an IRS compliance action. IRSOA recruited HNMCP to evaluate and retool the ADR programs to ensure IRSOA: (1) adequately addresses the needs of the relevant taxpayer segment; and (2) efficiently accelerates case resolution.

Read more about our project with the IRSOA here.

 

Office of New York City Councilman Daniel Garodnick

New York City Council Member Daniel R. Garodnick’s office is looking at two areas of the New York City Comptroller Office’s operations: the way the Office resolves legal claims against the City of New York, and the Office’s audit function. Garodnick called in HNMCP to assess whether the City is spending the right amount of time litigating versus settling cases, determine whether the best processes to settle cases are being employed, and make recommendations on how to improve the City’s conflict management systems. Students provided a critical review of the audit process, considered whether there are ways to make the audit more results-driven and less confrontational, and proposed an improved conflict management system for disputes arising out of the audits.

Read more about our project with Council Member Garodnick here.

 

Seeds of Peace

Seeds of Peace (SoP) is dedicated to the pursuit of lasting peace by helping high potential youth in regions of conflict develop effective leadership in peace-building. There are more than one hundred NGOs devoted to conflict resolution and peace-building in Israel and Palestine that, while having similar or shared missions, have little to no coordination or communication between organizations. SoP contracted HNMCP to map the scope of the peace-building community and make recommendations on a consensus-building process for organizations to leverage their individual strengths to positively impact each other’s work and goals.

Read more about our project with Seeds of Peace here.

Choosing to Help: A Tribute to Roger D. Fisher, 1922-2012

It is the spring of 1997 and I am sitting in Pound 107 while Roger Fisher ‘48, Williston Professor of Law, Emeritus, is telling a story about his serving as a weather reconnaissance pilot in World War II. As a teaching assistant for the Negotiation Workshop, I have heard the story at least a dozen times by now and feel my mind wandering. And yet, against my will, as the story reaches its crescendo and the combination punch line/negotiation lesson flows from Roger’s lips, I find myself involuntarily leaning forward and, a second later, helplessly bursting into laughter. The note I jot down to myself is: “All of life is about who tells better stories.”

Storytelling was indeed one of Roger’s finest talents. His sense of timing, the inflection of his voice and his radiant smile seemed to be perfectly calibrated with his audiences, whether they were law students, diplomats, soldiers or community mediators.

But teaching about “all of life” was Roger’s real gift and his ongoing legacy for generations of students and others whom he touched, directly or indirectly, through his work.

In many ways, Roger did not fit in easily at Harvard Law School. In a profession that trains students to identify analytical gaps in others’ reasoning and to posit critical arguments for why something—an idea, a vision, a reform—that might seem likely to happen at first glance couldn’t, shouldn’t or wouldn’t happen, Roger took a different tack. His energies seemed ever focused on figuring out how things that seemed unlikely could be made reality. In this way, he unwittingly exposed himself to charges that he was an ivory tower idealist, unaware of the harsh realities of a world filled with malevolence and evil.

But to those who knew him, to those who witnessed his sharp mind in action every day, just the opposite was true. Here was a man who, after serving in Europe in World War II, returned home to learn that his college roommate and two close friends had perished in the conflict; a man who, as a young State Department lawyer, assisted W. Averell Harriman in crafting the Marshall Plan; a man who served as a fierce and partisan advocate for the government in arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court as a young lawyer. Though he had witnessed the consequences and carnage of violent conflict, Roger somehow chose to see, engage and elicit the best of human potential.

Roger was a master at the art of perspective-taking, of understanding how deep human needs—to be heard, valued, respected, autonomous and safe—when unmet or trampled upon, become seeds of evil and violence, seeds that can cause us to villainize each other, and that motivate us to see the world in stark black-and-white terms. For Roger, the purpose of perspective-taking was never to excuse or justify evil. Rather, it was a way to discover new approaches to diplomacy, to influence and to understanding. These approaches resonated with many because they cut across cultures and appealed to common human needs, which he often termed “interests,” instead of appealing to force, coercion and power. Roger’s revolutionary approach to negotiation, one that typically began by putting the protagonist in the chair of her perceived opponent, giving her a view of the world through her adversary’s eyes, inspired generations of Harvard Law School students to commit themselves to conflict resolution as a career.

Roger’s brilliant and, at times, counterintuitive, thinking is embodied in a series of best-selling books, articles, and manuscripts spanning the second half of his long and storied career. The most famous of these, “Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In,” 3d. (co-written with William Ury and Bruce Patton ‘84), has been translated into 36 languages and has sold millions of copies. Though at times dismissed for choosing to write prescriptively and in easily comprehensible terms to a mass audience instead of articulating grand theory for an academic one, Roger nonetheless gave birth to an entirely new field of study within the academy, one that has changed fundamentally the face of graduate school education, not just in law schools, but in schools of business, public policy, communications and diplomacy

He used his academic vantage point to tackle real-world problems. His direct interventions and advice advanced negotiations that facilitated the signing of the Camp David Accords in 1979, eased the way for a peaceful transition of power in post-apartheid South Africa in the early 1990s, and promoted the resolution of a border dispute and the signing of a permanent peace treaty between Ecuador and Peru in 1998.

But it is a mistake to think that Roger’s attempts to make a difference were always, or even mostly, successful; I suspect they were not. In my early days teaching at the law school, I can recall venturing into his office on occasion for some counsel or to ask a question. After sharing his thoughts with me, he would motion for me to sit down: “Now, can I ask you for your advice? I am writing a letter to the secretary of state about X …” Time and again I was struck, first, by the notion that a professor, senior to me by half a century, valued the input of a 20-something neophyte, and, second, that Roger seemed completely undeterred by the small chance that the secretary of state would read his letter. Always, with Roger, there seemed to be an unrelenting urgency to bring theory to practice, to make a difference on the ground. “The problem,” Roger would say, “is not in finding a solution. Lots of smart people discover good solutions all the time. The problem is finding a way to get there.”

Thirty years after Roger first started teaching the Negotiation Workshop at Harvard Law School, the course remains one of the most popular at the school, and the pedagogy it deploys—creative and interdisciplinary—remains a model for others at Harvard and around the world. In designing the course, Roger drew from many academic and pedagogical wells. He experimented with new teaching methods, the use of simulations, and the use of video and intensive personalized feedback. He looked outside the confines of the law to integrate the work of thinkers like Chris Argyris in action science and Howard Raiffa, a renowned Bayesian decision theorist, to name just a couple. In both its content and its form, even with 20 years of innovation since his retirement, Negotiation Workshop remains one of the enduring gifts that Roger left Harvard Law School.

But there is more than just the concepts, the pedagogy and the form of Negotiation Workshop that I carry with me as a teacher, more than just the course content and delivery style.

For example, I remember Roger, at the end of class each day as students filed out of Pound 107, walking up and down the rows throwing away the empty Coke bottles and candy wrappers students had left at their seats. By the midpoint of the semester, students disposed of their own garbage.

Those of us who had the honor of having Roger as a professor or of working with him in Negotiation Workshop will surely recall similar subtle teaching moments along with his more blunt exhortation, “Choose to help.” In other words: Don’t just do your job well, but be observant; find ways to exert your influence to make a positive difference whenever you can.

As I think about Roger’s career, his many accomplishments and his long life, it seems to me that his admonishment to us embodied his own sense of calling: “Choose to help.”

In a profession where sharp-edged critiques tend to outnumber new ideas, and in a world where threats, whether of lawsuits or of wars, seem to eclipse the voices of engagement and dialogue, Roger’s contributions—his scholarship, his stories, his example and his never-ceasing “choose to help” attitude—are to me as inspiring, fresh and urgent as ever. And I trust they will remain alive in the heart of this student—and in those of so many others—for years to come.

This tribute by Thaddeus R. Beal Clinical Professor Robert Bordone ‘97 was first published in the HLS Bulletin.

Can We Get a Political Timeout? Presidential Debates Should be Dialogues, Not Football Games.

An October 25, 2012, Op/Ed in the Los Angeles Times By Robert C. Bordone and Heather Scheiwe Kulp

 

Reading the newspapers recently, we’ve been struck by how similar the presidential debate commentary has been to commentary about “Monday Night Football.”

After the matchups in this year’s “debate season,” political pundits criticized President Obama’s “prevent defense” and “two-yard runs down the middle.” They talked about how Mitt Romney ”spiked the football.”

 

 

And football wasn’t the only sports metaphor invoked in the coverage. On Tuesday, “CBS This Morning’s” ticker about the previous night’s debate read “Final Face-Off,” while ABC’s”Good Morning America” heralded the “Final Debate Duel.” And the Los Angeles Times headlined with “Obama reverses roles, comes out swinging at Romney in final debate.”

Zero-sum, take-no-prisoners sports talk has not just seeped into our political talk; it dominates it. The post-debate discussion, on TV and in our homes, was more likely to focus on which side won the 140-character Tweet fight than on the deeper values, priorities and visions articulated by the candidates.

Voters have been transformed from active citizens to spectators, and the two parties seem happy about it. As Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen told the New York Times: “I think for the base, much of this is theater. We know who we are for, but we need to see great performances because it helps us spread the word that this is a ticket worth buying.”

So are presidential debates forever doomed to be just another excuse to gather friends, family and other partisans around snacks and beer to enjoy the show?

We hope not. Political entertainment does little good for the voters or the country. Despite the troubling dumbing down of our political campaigns and news coverage of them, we believe that at heart most voters still tune in to the debates because they want to understand how the candidates will address the most challenging and important issues of the day.

But form must follow function.

As mediators whose professional lives are devoted to teaching others how to listen more effectively to each other and engage in genuine dialogue, we had high hopes for the second presidential debate’s town hall format. We thought it might compel both candidates to respond directly to questions from undecided voters, substituting thoughtful conversation for the kind of hand-to-hand, tit-for-tat jousting of previous debates.

But combat was what the candidates had trained for, and combat was what we got. By the time the first question from an undecided voter had been answered, the citizen/voters in the room had been relegated to mere props in the candidates’ epic battle.

On Monday night, when the candidates sat next to each other at a single table for the last time before the election, there was one more opportunity for a constructive engagement on the issues. But with pre-debate hype framed in win-lose terms and the pressure of endless postgame scorekeeping looming, the candidates were intent on getting in the one-line sound bites they’d almost certainly prepared in advance. Romney accused Obama of making an “apology tour” to the Middle East, a region that has experienced a “rising tide of chaos” on Obama’s watch. Obama repeatedly accused Romney of inconsistency. “You’ve been all over the map,” he said.

One big problem with setting up the debates as sporting events, with time clocks and winners and losers, is that the ability to “win” such a contest has little to do with the essential qualities for being a successful leader. An effective president needs to be able to engage in dialogue, not argument; to negotiate and persuade rather than browbeat; to listen respectfully and to embrace good ideas from across the political spectrum.

Perhaps next election, we ought to reframe and retitle these important national events as “presidential dialogues.” Candidates should be asked to model a productive, positive discourse for the American people. Disagreement is a necessary part of political dialogue. But it doesn’t have to produce winners and losers.

Thomas Jefferson knew that public exposure to national dialogue might be an effective vaccine against a concentration of power. To that end, in 1778, he introduced “A Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge.” The preamble acknowledged that even the most conscientious of governments gets sucked into power struggles and proposed that the only check was an educated electorate. Jefferson envisioned broader public access to education as a way to “illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large.” Jefferson believed this education would prepare people to identify perversions of power and engage fully in national conversations about their own individual rights.

Today, it is widely believed that most people have no interest in or attention span for the kind of engagement Jefferson envisioned, that the general population can’t understand the complexities of Social Security or the tax code and much prefers sparring matches.

But our appetites are shaped by what we’re fed. A “presidential dialogue,” modeled on a dinner-table conversation between two neighbors with shared hope for a better community but competing visions for how to achieve it, could bring us closer to the original intention of political debates. Dialogue evokes images of engagement and respect rather than winning, losing and scorekeeping. Such a shift might even change the expectations and tone of the commentary to follow. Dialogues, after all, are neither won nor lost.

Imagine what it would be like to see two candidates aspiring to high political office able to engage in such a difficult conversation despite their divergent and conflicting views. The approach might even trickle down, inspiring the rest of us to model it when discussing issues with our own neighbors, friends and even our foes. Now that would be a debate worth watching.

Robert C. Bordone is a professor at Harvard Law School and director of the Harvard Negotiation & Mediation Clinical Program. Heather Scheiwe Kulp is a clinical fellow at the Harvard Negotiation & Mediation Clinical Program.

Welcome to new HNMCP Clinical Fellow Heather Scheiwe Kulp

HNMCP is pleased to announce that Heather Scheiwe Kulp has joined HNMCP for a two-year term as a Clinical Fellow.

Prior to joining HNMCP, Heather was a Skadden Fellow with Resolution Systems Institute/The Center for Conflict Resolution in Chicago. There, she partnered with courts and government agencies to develop small claims, foreclosure, and other mediation programs for low-income litigants. She has consulted with multiple states, the Uniform Law Commission, and the Department of Justice about best practices in foreclosure mediation. Her work has been published by the American Bar Association Dispute Resolution Section, the Illinois State Bar Association, Wipf & Stock, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, ACResolution Magazine, and the Arkansas Law Review (forthcoming Spring 2013).

Heather is a graduate of Northwestern University School of Law and Saint Olaf College. Prior to attending law school, she founded and directed a not-for-profit alternative magazine for young women, Alive Magazine.

As a Clinical Fellow with HNMCP, Heather will work on many special projects within the Clinic and will work with Harvard Law School student practice organizations that focus on alternative dispute resolution.

Discussing Clinical Legal Education in Pakistan

When I asked about the justice system in Pakistan, the reply of locals was the same: the court system is broken. Courts, I was told, are overloaded with cases and the legal system is plagued by corruption. There was little sense of hope for the average, unconnected citizen. As one Punjabi saying goes, “May God save even my worst enemy from disease and a court case.”

Nevertheless, reform efforts are underway. One of the recent internal projects has been to reform the education of law students who will inherit the legal system. Syed Imad-ud-Din Asad, Director of the Center for Law and Policy, explained to me that legal education historically has received little government attention in Pakistan. In addition, teaching law is not prestigious and pays little, so there is difficulty attracting high quality professors. In an effort to learn from outside models of law teaching, the Center for Law and Policy launched a conference series in Lahore titled “Global Trends in Legal Education.” In August, I traveled to Lahore to speak at the first conference focused on clinical and experiential learning.

Currently, Pakistan has no equivalent to clinical education that allows students to get practical experience with the law. One of the goals of the conference was to start a dialogue in Pakistan about how they might develop an experiential component to their legal education. I was joined on the panel in person by a clinical professor from Boston University and by educators from Northeastern University and Jindal Global Law School who participated via video an. A panel of Pakistani former judges and legal educators wrapped up the conference with their responses to the presentations and insights about how experiential learning could be incorporated into their system of legal education. Their comments, which mirrored those I heard in discussion with Pakistani lawyers at the conference, indicated a real enthusiasm for experiential learning to improve legal education. Despite current obstacles—such as the lack of supervised practice rules for law students—they were genuinely interested in taking steps toward giving students more realistic practice experience.

I also spoke specifically about HNMCP and the types of projects that we do with clients around the world. While there was a general sense of enthusiasm and interest in the ways we think about approaching disputes, I was surprised by the overall resistance from Pakistani lawyers to the idea of settling disputes outside of formal litigation procedures. Despite my incantation to re-imagine the role of lawyers, they perceived ADR as a threat to their livelihoods.

Pakistan actually has a long history of traditional methods of dispute resolution, which we would categorize today under the umbrella of ADR, in its tribal regions. For example, many villages have an assembly of elders that convenes members of the community to discuss important issues and to resolve local conflicts. The elders use long-evolved processes for issue analysis, deliberation, decision-making, and implementation. However, these traditional forms of Pakistani dispute resolution are entirely divorced from the colonial legal system that was imposed during British rule. One of the challenges with the Pakistani legal system has been that it was imported wholesale from western culture, and not crafted according to the specific needs of the Pakistani people. In a country where 90% of the citizens speak Punjabi, Sindhi, or other regional languages, Pakistani law requires that all laws are written in English and all legal proceedings are conducted in English.

Nevertheless, the theory and practice of ADR is slowly trickling into Pakistan. The International Finance Corporation (IFC), a private sector arm of the World Bank Group, has been actively developing commercial mediation centers. The attorneys I spoke with in Lahore were concerned about the threat ADR posed to their livelihoods, but were interested in learning more about how mediation could ease the burden on the courts and improve outcomes for their clients. Given the interest our discussions sparked, the Center for Law and Policy has scheduled another conference in Lahore in August 2013 that will focus specifically on ADR.

I was told that the people of Pakistan pride themselves on their hospitality, and my experience confirmed this.  I was welcomed warmly. During our visit, we met with the Governor of the Punjab, had dinner with local politicians and a member of parliament at the Lahore Provincial Assembly, and were invited to Islamabad to speak with the Minister of Education. Many Pakistanis expressed their appreciation that we traveled across the world to visit Pakistan during a time of visible conflict, when outsiders were largely avoiding the country. For me, the sense of being a lone tourist in a city of seven million people was a powerful immersion experience. In one week, I just scratched the surface of Pakistan’s complex history—cultural, political, and legal. I hope to return to continue my learning, and to continue the dialogues we began.

Chad Carr ‘06 is a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School and Clinical Instructor with the Harvard Negotiation & Mediation Clinical Program. In the summer of 2012, Carr presented at the Global Trends in Legal Education Conference sponsored by the Center for Law and Policy in Lahore, Pakistan.

Former U.S. Trade Representative Shares Tools for Successful Multiparty Negotiations

Textile imports from China. Trade gaps with Japan. Pirated music in Canada. World Trade Organization technology tariffs. These are just a few of the issues Ambassador Charlene Barshefsky negotiated as United States Trade Representative from 1997 to 2001. On October 3, Barshefsky came to Harvard Law School to share her experiences with students in the Advanced Negotiation Workshop taught by Clinical Professor Robert Bordone ‘97 and Lecturer Rory Van Loo ‘07, director and assistant director of HNMCP.

As a young attorney at Steptoe & Johnson, Barshefsky rapidly developed expertise in trade disputes. In 1993, the Clinton Administration asked her to serve as a deputy U.S. trade representative. Soon after her confirmation, Barshefsky took up negotiations with a close U.S. ally, Japan. The trade gap between U.S.-Japanese exports and imports had ballooned, to Japan’s advantage. Barshefsky had to close the gap.

A few years later, this time as the Cabinet-level U.S. trade representative, another problem emerged in Asia. China’s pirated media production and exports were out of control, and China ignored previously signed intellectual property protection agreements. Barshefsky had to both reduce the rate of piracy and establish long-term methods to enforce IP rights.

Comparing her negotiations in Japan and China, Barshefsky discussed the importance of knowing the context in which the other party is operating. Japan and the U.S. understood each other’s goals and had a long history of trade negotiations. China, however, was a tabula rasa; at that time, few U.S. officials had expertise in Chinese affairs, let alone in the Chinese decision-making process. In the Japanese negotiations Barshefsky focused on the negotiation dance itself. When it came to China, she had to lay much more groundwork.

Since China lacked context for discussing IP (in Chinese culture, copying was a sign of flattery and private property rights were non-existent), Barshefsky had to create it by educating Chinese officials on the importance of IP protections for the country’s development and innovation aims. Building relationships over many months, she learned who made decisions, how various governmental players impacted agreements, and what areas of China’s economy would be most impacted by IP enforcement.

Once she understood the landscape, she could articulate with specificity the goal for IP enforcement. This phase—setting and articulating the goal—is the most important in a negotiation, she told the students.

“The goal tells you what you need to know. It informs who should be at the table, and which parties are extraneous,” Barshefsky explained. “If the goal is framed too broadly, the results are likely to be ambiguous and unenforceable. If the framing promises too much, parties will walk away feeling deceived.” Barshefsky reminded students that they can always pause, regroup, and reframe the proposition.

Students in the Advanced Negotiation Workshop wondered how Barshefsky handled parties peripheral to the China negotiations, especially human rights advocates and U.S. labor organizations. Barshefsky cautioned that a negotiator has to carefully balance stakeholder concerns. In the broadest sense, however, “negotiations are not social events, and everyone you invite will either help you reach the goal, take up time, or dilute the process,” she instructed.  “Once the goal embodies the views of stakeholders, negotiations become highly intense and the number of parties necessarily limited.”

The commercial negotiation context is different than the diplomatic context, she said. During diplomatic talks, parties can exchange constructive ambiguities—niceties that could be interpreted many ways. But when commercial interests are involved, parties need to be clear, specific, and always benchmark against their goal.

Thanks in part to this strategy, not only did Barshefsky negotiate intellectual property protection with China, but she also secured China’s entrance into the World Trade Organization. How did she do it?

“Clear goals; knowing the terrain both substantive and political; the ability to persuade; and persistence. There’s always a way to pique someone’s interest. There is always a way to articulate a winning argument; there is always a way to find win/win solutions. You just have to be agile,” she advised. Her agility won over the Chinese negotiators.

Barshefsky’s stories clearly resonated with the HLS students. “Her negotiation toolbox is overflowing, and we all became more strategic negotiators today because she was willing to share these tools,” said Alexis Beveridge ‘13.

“Ambassador Barshefsky’s stories of success and challenge as a negotiator, both while she was the U.S. trade representative and since then, brought to life some of the central themes of multiparty negotiation,” said Bordone. “Hearing her deconstruct her approach to goal-setting and preparation demonstrated the discipline and perspective-taking that make for great negotiators.”

This article by Clinical Fellow Heather Kulp was first printed in the Harvard Law School News.

 

Photo by Martha Stewart: Ambassador Charlene Barshefsky, former United States trade representative (1997–2001)

On the Road

On the Road is a new column that reflects the various ways in which the HNMCP staff is engaging with the field of alternative dispute resolution outside of the classroom and clinical project.

 

In mid-October, Clinic Director Robert Bordone ‘97 presented to the annual conference of the International Academy of Mediators.  His talk, entitled “Building the Mediator’s Toolkit: Skills of Diagnosis and Design” attracted more than 100 participants and a lively question-and-answer session following the event. Other speakers at the conference included Harvard Law School Professor Robert H. Mnookin ‘68, Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School Professor Guhan Subramanian ‘98, Harvard Law School Lecturer Sheila Heen ‘93, Columbia Law School Professor Carol Liebman, Brandeis University Professor Alain Lempereur ‘95, and current HNMCP client Colin Rule.

Jeremy McClane ‘‘02 was invited for a second year to present at the American Bar Association International Law Section‘s annual fall meeting. Jeremy facilitated two sessions dealing with cross-cultural negotiation in international dealmaking. The two presentations were attended by over 100 participants, and included both a talk and a panel discussion with senior international lawyers from different jurisdictions around the world.

Heather Scheiwe Kulp, HNMCP’s new Clinical Fellow, presented on a panel entitled “Looking Forward: Lessons Learned from the Mortgage Foreclosure Crisis” at the November 2012 Arkansas Law Review Symposium, held at the University of Arkansas School of Law in Fayetteville. Prior to joining HNMCP, Heather worked with courts and government agencies to design, implement, and improve foreclosure dispute resolution programs. From that work, she developed foreclosure dispute system design best practices, which she presented at the symposium.

This fall, HNMCP staff presented the second semester of our lunchtime discussion series Negotiation in the News. The series is intended to convene a space where the application of theories in Getting to Yes and taught to students in the “Negotiation Workshop,” the “Multiparty Negotiation Workshop” and the “Dispute Systems Design” seminar could be applied to real life, current news events. Director Bob Bordone ‘97kicked off the series in September with “Red Lines: Can They Work in the Iran Nuclear Weapons Stalemate?” Assistant Director Rory Van Loo ‘07 and Clinical Instructor Chad Carr ‘06 followed up in October with brown bag lunch sessions titled, respectively, “American Express, Big Banks, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Balancing Negotiation with Prosecution” and “Stalled Negotiations: Harvard University and the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers.” Clinical Instructor Jeremy McClane ‘02 rounded out the fall semester with “Negotiating a Ceasefire in Syria.” The second semester of this series saw an increase in attendance and participation and helped refine the goals and format for this series in the coming spring semester.

What the Harvard Mediation Program Means to Me

Before I came to law school, I worked as a paralegal at a small law firm, with only three attorneys. I was in charge of all of the litigation files, and I soon came up with a new system for how the files should be organized. Sure of myself, I immediately went to the secretary, file clerk, and pre-litigation paralegal to implement my system. Weeks later, after all of the intra-office bickering about filing died down, the pre-litigation paralegal said to me, “Amanda, you are very smart, but your people skills could really use some work.”

I came to law school determined to work on my “soft” skills. I decided that a major goal was to learn better how to communicate with others, especially in organizations. I was quickly drawn towards mediation and negotiation, and honestly I joined the Harvard Mediation Program (HMP) only to improve my chances of getting into the “Negotiation Workshop” as a first-year student. I cannot believe how lucky that choice was.

HMP quickly became my home away from home at law school. The people in HMP were totally unlike all of the other people I met. Instead of being too busy to take time out of their day to see you, the people at HMP want to see you, to ask you how you are doing, and they genuinely care about your answer. The staff and members alike are warm and welcoming. As I try to think of a single story to encapsulate this feeling, I find myself coming up empty because there is no one moment that can explain the feeling of being “home.”

Before joining HMP, the idea that HMP also had membership from the broader community meant little or nothing to me. However, I now find that to be one of my favorite parts of the program. I really enjoy meeting people of all ages and all walks of life who have been drawn to mediation. Their perspectives mean that I am always learning, and I have come to make friends with some people I probably would never have met otherwise. HMP would be lost without our community members, who pick up the bulk of the mediation duties over school breaks, including the summer. But even if we could find a way to fill these needs without non-law school members, I would advocate to keep the community members in the program. HMP is really a community organization, both in whom we are and in whom we serve, in a way that I have found unique at the law school.

The work is also fascinating. This semester was my fourth actively mediating, and I still feel that every mediation I participate in, whether in small claims court or through our other programs, I gain new and unexpected insights. I know I am not alone in feeling this way. Every time I attend an advanced training, I am humbled by the realization that members who have been mediating for over twenty years are still picking up new insights of their own!

Finally, HMP has taught me many of the “soft” skills that I wanted to learn. I remember at one of the first HMP events I attended, someone was wearing a shirt that said, “When We Listen, Other People Talk.” I thought that was funny, but I have found it to be overwhelmingly true. The active listening, problem solving, and interest-development tools I have learned have not only helped me during mediations, but they have also helped me in every aspect of my life.  Every time that we train a new group of mediators, I always hear comments on the second weekend of training like “I went home and tried this out on my husband. I was shocked how well it worked!” When I graduate, I will deeply miss the HMP community, and I only hope someday I will return to Boston so I can become involved again.

Amanda Frye ‘13 is a third-year law student and co-president of the Harvard Mediation Program. After graduation she will be clerking on the 10th Circuit for the Honorable Harris Hartz. Her long-term interests lie in patent litigation and education reform.

Harvard Negotiation Law Review

The staff and members of the Harvard Negotiation Law Review (HNLR) had a productive and rewarding fall semester developing the journal’s eighteenth volume, preparing for the spring symposium, and enjoying social and career-related events.

HNLR’s upcoming spring publication features prominent scholars and practitioners writing on a variety of timely and interesting issues in the ADR field. Two of those articles help illustrate the range and depth of topics on which HNLR publishes. The first, by Professor Leonard Riskin of the University of Florida College of Law (currently a Visiting Professor at Northwestern University School of Law), will discuss the processes that can unfold internally for people engaged in an external conflict, i.e., the processes of mediation or negotiation taking place within an individual, which warrant as much attention as the external ADR processes between the two parties. Professor Riskin argues that such a model of the mind can help us better understand our internal processes so that we may, in turn, identify more effective external behaviors in response to conflict.

The second article, by The Pennsylvania State University professor Nancy Welsh and Professor Andrea Schneider of Marquette Law School, examines the potential for reforming the current system of investment treaty arbitration. For a variety of reasons, both states and investors increasingly advocate for mediation to supplement investor-state arbitration. This article draws upon dispute system design principles, socio-psychological research, procedural justice theories , and the U.S. experience with court-connected mediation to examine the efficacy of potential models of mediation and the characteristics an investment treaty system would need.

In addition to the unique exposure to contemporary scholarship and the chance to work with experts in the field, HNLR members benefit from partnerships with Harvard Negotiators and the Harvard Mediation Program throughout the fall semester. Joint events such as an Introductory ADR Night, an inter-organizational happy hour, and an ADR Careers Panel allowed students to explore opportunities in alternative dispute resolution at Harvard and beyond, as well as to connect with students who share similar passions about the field.

In the spring, we look forward to hosting the highlight of our year, our annual symposium, which attracts scholars and practitioners from around the country. We are honored to dedicate this year’s symposium to the life and work of the late Professor Roger D. Fisher, a pioneer in the field and co-founder of the Harvard Program on Negotiation. This event will take place on Saturday, March 2, 2013, on the Harvard Law School campus and will feature an exploration of Fisher’s career, his impact on the field of ADR, and the future trajectory of that work in light of his legacy. We remain deeply grateful to Professor Bordone, Heather Kulp, and Jeremy McClane at HNMCP for their guidance and support throughout the planning process, and hope that all readers of the newsletter can join us for this special event. Please visit our website for additional details to be announced soon!

Apoorva Patel ‘13 is the Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Negotiation Law Review. Patel received his BA at Duke University, where he studied public policy, education, and psychology. He is a former President of the Harvard South Asian Law Students Association and was a member of HNMCP’s team working with the Chilean Ministry of Justice in 2011–2012. He will join Hughes Hubbard & Reed in New York City after graduation.

Grant Strother ’12 Awarded the 2012 CPR Prize for Outstanding Original Student Article

Recent Harvard Law School Graduate Grant Strother ’12 was selected to receive The International Institute for Conflict Prevention & Resolution (CPR) Outstanding Original Student Article Award for his paper, “Resolving Cultural Property Disputes in the Shadow of the Law.” This award recognizes a student article or paper that is focused on events or issues in the field of ADR.

Grant also won the 2012 Roger Fisher-Frank E. A. Sander Prize for this paper at Harvard Law School’s Commencement last May. The article will be published in the Spring 2014 issue of the Harvard Negotiation Law Review.

“I had a great time,” Grant said of the 30^th Annual Awards ceremony, held in La Jolla, California on January 17, 2013. “I met a lot of experienced neutrals, including several retired judges (such as the Hon. Vaughn Walker), as well as law firm partners and corporate counsel. I was also invited to attend the Thursday session of the conference where I sat in on a talk about diversity and ADR as well as panels about ADR and business law and developments in international arbitration.”

Grant now works for Davis Polk & Wardwell in California. He was very involved in negotiation studies at Harvard Law School, where he served as a teaching assistant for the “Negotiation Workshop” and as co-chair of the Harvard Negotiators, a student organization that provides law students with opportunities to become actively involved in the field of negotiation and dispute resolution while working with real-world clients. He also took the advanced level “Multiparty Negotiation Workshop.”

Grant was nominated for the award by Harvard Negotiation & Mediation Clinical Program (HNMCP) Director and Thaddeus R. Beal Clinical Professor Robert Bordone ‘97. In 2010 former HLS students Maria Banda ‘10 and John Oppermann ’10 won this award for their paper “Building a Latin American Coalition on Forests: Negotiation Barriers and Opportunities.” In 2010 HNMCP itself won the CPR Award for “Problem Solving in the Law School Curriculum.”

The CPR Institute provides thought leadership and innovation as the global resource for conflict management and resolution of complex business-related disputes. Its wealth of intellectual property and published material has educated and motivated General Counsel and their law firms around the world toward an increased reliance on alternative forms of dispute resolution rather than litigation.

To read Grant’s winning paper or see past winners, click here.

Class Notes

Victoria Shannon ‘07 has recently accepted a position as an Assistant Professor of Law at Washington & Lee University School of Law. She will be teaching ADR, International Commercial Arbitration, and Civil Procedure. This fall also saw the publication of her new title Third Party Funding in International Arbitration by Wolters Kluwer. Congratulations, Victoria!

 

 

Congratulations to Erin Archerd ‘08, who is the new Langdon Fellow in Dispute Resolution at Ohio State’s Moritz College of Law.  In addition to researching ADR in education, she will be teaching courses with the ADR professors at Moritz, as well as doing a lot of student-centered work.

 

 

 

Rishi Batra ‘08 has accepted a tenure track position at Texas Tech University teaching Property and Negotiation/Mediation.

 

 

 

 

 

Jordan Goddard ’09 has accepted a position as an Adjunct Professor teaching negotiation in the MBA program at Northwest University.

 

 

 

 

Becky Jaffe ‘09 is currently clerking for U.S. District Judge Jerome B. Simandle in the District of New Jersey.

 

 

 

 

 

Jennifer Kan HLS 3L Visiting Program ‘11, HSPH ‘12 has accepted a clerkship offer with U.S. District Judge John G. Koeltl in the Southern District of New York.

 

 

Marisa Cruz ‘13 supervised the Street Law Summer Associates Program for her firm Hogan Lovells this past summer. The program taught negotiation skills to high school and college students. The Street Law Summer Associates Program partners D.C. law firms with students participating in the Mayor’s D.C. Summer Youth Employment Program. The Hogan Lovells Associates and their students competed in the Street Law Negotiation Showcase against others in the program and received many of the awards.

 

 

Lizzie Grosso ‘13 has accepted a clerkship offer with U.S. District Judge Harold Baer, Jr. in the Southern District of New York.

HNMCP begins search for new Assistant Director

HNMCP BEGINS A SEARCH FOR ITS NEXT ASSISTANT DIRECTOR

We have posted the position of HNMCP Assistant Director to the Harvard Employment website to begin this July, 2013.

For a job description or to apply, please go to the Harvard University ASPIRE System. Applications are accepts ONLY through the ASPIRE system and will not be accepted by regular mail or email.

Harvard Negotiation Institute Summer Program Open Enrollment

Take your negotiation skills to new heights!

 

Offered by the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, the Harvard Negotiation Institute Summer Programs are designed to help you achieve better results and create more value at the negotiation table. Taught by world-renowned negotiation experts, each program focuses on a critical aspect of negotiation—from structuring high-stakes deals and mediating complex disputes to resolving intractable problems and strengthening difficult relationships.

The Summer Programs extend far beyond theory and lectures. Engaged with a group of professional peers, you will have the opportunity to refine your skills through interactive exercises, negotiation simulations, and hands-on activities. After taking part in this invaluable learning experience, you will emerge well prepared to make better decisions, mediate better agreements, and negotiate better deals.

Download the 2013 HNI Brochure

These programs have been approved for continuing legal education (CLE) credits in the U.S.

Have questions? Contact the Program on Negotiation at 617-495-7705 or hni@law.harvard.edu.