Category Archives: Mediation Link Round Up

From time to time I round up the links to articles I’ve been sharing with my followers on Twitter, where I’ve been microblogging for the last couple of months. I’m passing some along here to my non-Twittering readers, along with other stuff that you just don’t want to miss. I hope you enjoy these.

• Neuroscience and illusion: using magic to understand attention, consciousness in this article via The Situationist, which wonders elsewhere whether major league baseball can deter divorce
• A personal injury mediation seen from three sides, in the latest International Dispute Negotiation podcast
• Rhythm, which fosters bonding, communication, is not uniquely a human characteristic, as a study considers a dancing parrot
• It’s statistically likely that people don’t know how to apply statistics in making decisions, via Cognitive Daily
• Framing illness: in a time of pandemic, let us ask ourselves, to what extent is disease a social construct?
• Lessons from the NFL in personnel selection, at Minding the Workplace
• Philip Hesketh shares tips on marketing mediation to personal injury lawyers in an article for Mediator Magazine
• The Canadian law blog Slaw.ca asks, will lawyers use neuroenhancers? And might it be malpractice if they don’t?
• Larger groups of sparrows reportedly solve problems faster than smaller ones, according to Not Rocket Science
• Bob Sutton considers how group decisions go wrong
• The ultimate beginner’s mind – inside the infant brain, an article appearing in the Boston Globe
• Mapping the seven deadly sins – the distribution of bad behavior across the U.S. How does your state rank?
• Why you’re the last to know when your brain makes decisions, via Neuromarketing
• Good news for folks who talk with their hands – using gestures can aid learning, according to Science Daily
• “The Edges of Orthodoxy in Mediation” (PDF) – the latest provocative thinking from John Wade, courtesy of Geoff Sharp
• Jeff Thompson, a mediator and New York City police officer who publishes the blog Enjoy Mediation asks,  “Are You an Effective Mediator?” (And you’d better answer, “Yes, Officer!”)
• Vickie Pynchon’s superb series of video interviews and clips from the American Bar Association’s Section on Dispute Resolution spring meeting last month in New York City, including “Are We Post-Racial Yet?“, “50 Ways to Break an Impasse: Sam Imperati at the ABA Dispute Resolution Conference“, and “Mediation as Sales and Niche Mediation Practice with Jim Melamed of Mediate.com“
• John Folk-Williams at Cross Collaborate provides highlights from Peter Adler’s lengthy Mediate.com essay, “The End of Mediation“.

The following articles linked to below make essential reading for the professional mediator, addressing as they do three important topics in mediation practice — reaching settlement, making decisions, and what to do with those notes.

Reaching settlement.

Giving us a ring-side seat for the final hours of a tough negotiation, Victoria Pynchon, an experienced mediator of complex commercial disputes, considers the devil in the details with a four-part series that offers a rare glimpse inside a mediator’s mind as she wrestles with demons:

• “You’ve Settled? With a Term Sheet? The Devil in the Details“
• “The Devil in the Details: When Do You First Talk Terms?“
• “Devil in the Details: Sticker Term Shock“
• “Devil in the Details: the Deal, the Whole Deal and Nothing But the Deal“

Decision-making.

Perhaps one of the most important services that mediators provide is to aid clients in reaching decisions.  Attorney John DeGroote, who shares Settlement Perspectives and negotiation advice based on eight years as the Chief Litigation Counsel of a global company, makes a strong case for using decision trees to improve settlement decisions in a two-part series.  “Decision Tree Analysis in Litigation: The Basics” introduces readers to decision trees –“tree-shaped models of [a] decision to be made and the uncertainties it encompasses,” according to Suffolk University Law Professor Dwight Golann in Mediating Legal Disputes — and links to The Arboretum, a free online tool provided by mediator Daniel M. Klein for building decision trees.  In “Why Should You Try a Decision Tree in Your Next Dispute?“, John convinces the naysayers, offering persuasive reasons why decision trees make smart business sense.

Mediator’s notes — destroy or keep?

One of the ongoing debates within the mediation community concerns what to do with notes — keep them or destroy them?

Mediators who destroy their notes typically do so because it:

• Protects the confidentiality of mediation communications
• Eliminates the burden on the mediator and the mediator’s resources to store and secure notes
• Reduces the risk that the parties will subpoena the mediator later if negotiations fail, particularly if the mediator informs the parties in the agreement to mediate that he or she routinely destroys notes as a matter of practice

Those who keep their notes (and I count myself in this group) do so because:

• Due to the nature of the mediator’s practice, parties may return for follow-up sessions after a period of time, and notes will refresh the mediator’s recollection of the case
• Notes, with suitable precautions taken to conceal the identity of the parties, can be used to create case studies for purposes of mediation and negotiation training
• Destroying notes could prejudice a mediator’s professional liability insurer defending a malpractice action against the mediator, potentially voiding the mediator’s insurance coverage

Mediator Geoff Sharp directs his readers to an article by Australian mediator Michael Creelman, who advocates the retention of notes in large part due to the insurance issue in “Mediators’ notes of the mediation – a mediator’s protective device“. Meanwhile, Atlanta-based attorney and mediator Christopher Annunziata offers the view from Georgia, coming down in favor of destroying notes.

A quick round-up of stories for your reading pleasure:

They say that it’s better to give than to receive. In part that’s because of the pleasure we experience in giving to others. Science Daily reports that monkeys derive the same pleasure from giving that humans do.

Bob Sutton at Work Matters reports on a study that shows how much a manager’s implicit assumptions about personnel limits his or her ability to notice changes in employees’ performance. He explains that hope remains: it is possible to shift from a “fixed” mindset to a “growth” mindset.

Not Exactly Rocket Science discusses the development of cooperation and sensitivity to others in humans, reporting that children learn to share by age 7-8.

As college students around the country head off to campus for the start of the academic year, many will find themselves living with roommates, an experience that can be positive or characterized by conflict. The Situationist shares research on college freshmen living with a roommate:

An essential element in reducing loneliness and building a good roommate relationship involves moving away from … ‘ego-system’ approach, in which people focus on their own needs and try to shore up their self-image, toward an ‘eco-system’ approach, in which people are motivated by genuine caring and compassion for another person.

Here’s a round-up of links for your viewing pleasure:

The Stella Awards, a site that recognizes the year’s wackiest lawsuits, has announced the winners for 2007. The Stella Awards are named in honor of Stella Liebeck, who achieved notoriety when she spilled a hot cup of McDonald’s coffee on her lap and sued, winning a $2.9 million jury verdict. (Via Slaw.)

The public reacted with indignation last week when it learned that a Hillsborough County, Florida, deputy sheriff dumped quadriplegic Brian Sterner from his wheelchair during booking following an arrest for an alleged traffic violation — an act which was caught on video. Sterner, however, intends to negotiate with, rather than sue, the sheriff’s office in what Sterner’s lawyer has characterized as a “roundtable” discussion. (Note that Sterner’s lawyer says that “he can avoid some legal hurdles by negotiating outside court. Government agencies are liable for a maximum $100,000 per person for negligence when employees are working within their professional capacity. If a jury were to award a plaintiff more than that, the government agency would pay the $100,000 and the plaintiff would have to petition the Legislature for the remainder. “)

At Brains on Purpose, Stephanie West Allen has pulled together resources to help facilitate learning and mind changing.

At Legal Blog Watch, Carolyn Elefant wonders whether blogging is the reason for mandatory arbitration agreements for law firm employees.

Here’s something for neuroscience fans (and what dispute resolution professional is not?) — Jason Kottke at Kottke.org interviews Jonah Lehrer, author of Proust Was a Neuroscientist.

The World Directory of ADR Blogs keeps growing. I’ve just added three more blogs:

• The Colorado Family Solutions Center blog, which focuses on ways to help families in transition find solutions outside of court.
• Conflict Matters, which provides tools and ideas about conflict resolution and mediation, published by dispute resolution professional and attorney Roy Baroff of North Carolina. (Hat tip to the Mediation Mensch for these two latest additions.)
• Secretos del Mediador Exitoso, a Spanish language blog, answers the question, what do you need to know and do to be able to mediate successfully? This blog’s motto is “Transformacion de Conflictos, Cooperacion y Respeto.”

Finally, for a rousing example of what a bunch of people working together can achieve, here’s an election-related news story: On February 19, over a thousand Prairie View A&M University students and their supporters marched seven miles to the polls at the Waller County, Texas, Courthouse to protest the lack of an early voting place on campus. You can view the march at YouTube. Would you walk seven miles to cast your vote?