Is it just me, or have law students gotten infinitely more resourceful and creative since my own law school days?

Ian Best, a third-year law student at Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University, has embarked upon a first-of-its-kind experiment: he’s blogging for credit. Best has undertaken a study of “the growing phenomenon of ‘blawgs,’ the weblogs of lawyers, law professors, and law students”, using 3L Epiphany, the blog he created, as a vehicle through which to explore the legal blogosphere and to report his findings. You can read more about Best’s objectives here.

As part of his research, Best is in the process of developing a taxonomy of legal blogs, broken down by practice areas, which, my mediator friends will be glad to learn, includes a category for alternative dispute resolution.

Best’s innovation does not end there. There’s a footnote (literally) to all this that mediators will appreciate. I’ll let Best explain, as he did in a recent email to me:

I hope you will join me in wishing Ian success in his project and in his law school and legal careers.

One of the greatest rewards of blogging has been the opportunity to meet alternative dispute resolution practitioners from all over the world. And it’s affirming to learn that no matter what latitude we inhabit, we all seem to share a common tongue–the lingua franca of conflict resolvers everywhere. And the differences of course only keep things interesting.

There is much we can all learn from each other with the internet as facilitator for our conversations together. I am therefore honored and pleased to be able to bring to you today a conversation with a respected leader in the mediation field–Ewan Malcolm, Director of the pioneering Scottish Mediation Network based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Ewan guides us through Scotland’s mediation landscape, offering those of us who live elsewhere in the world a unique and in-depth look into the heart and soul of mediation practice there.

Please click here to read my conversation with Ewan. (And with deepest gratitude to Ewan for his generosity and kindness in taking time to share his perspectives and experience with my readers.)