Settle It Now Negotiation Blog: Arbitration & Mediation

Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Arbitration & Mediation Blogs

OR PHONE (866) 635-1838 for Bankruptcy Help, (866) 635-6190 for Divorce,
(866) 635-2689 for Personal Injury or (866) 635-9402 for Criminal Defense

Find a Local Lawyer

Bankruptcy (866) 635-1838
Divorce (866) 635-6190
Personal Injury (866) 635-2689
Criminal Defense (866) 635-9402

Arbitration & Mediation

Settle It Now Negotiation Blog

Everything you always wanted to know about negotiation but were afraid to ask. From Victoria Pynchon.
By Victoria Pynchon

Post Frequency: 12.5/day

Last Entry: March 28, 2011 at 19:26:33

Outside Settlement Counsel in Class Actions

Posted on April 21, 2008
As I promised last week, we'll be providing our readers with a series of posts about the use of settlement counsel in sophisticated and complex commercial litigation.While searching the internet for pertinent articles, I cam upon an interview with a New York attorney, Lew Goldfarb, whose entire practice is devoted to settling cases for clients already represented in litigation by other law firms...

Confidentiality of Settlement Proceedings in California's Central District Federal Court

Posted on April 21, 2008
Thanks to Perry Itkin's Florida Mediator for linking to this Memorandum Opinion enforcing, by way of contempt proceeding, a mediation confidentiality order entered by a federal magistrate in the District of Columbia in January of this year.We were just discussing this issue at the yearly Settlement Officer (my own S...

What it Takes to Be a Great Mediation Advocate from Day on Torts

Posted on April 21, 2008
Thanks to Geoff Sharp for leading me to John Day's terrific series of posts on What it Takes to Be a Great Trial Lawyer particularly Part 11, The Courage to Tell the Client the Truth, excerpt below.As information is learned in a given case, great trial lawyers also tell their client the truth...

The Role of Specialized Settlement Counsel by Jay McCauley

Posted on April 21, 2008
From AAA arbitrator and Judicate West mediator Jay McCauley's website: The Role of Specialized Settlement Counsel At bottom, virtually all litigation is a tool of negotiation. The numbers say it all: Ninety-five percent of all filed lawsuits in fact settle before trial, and upwards of ninety-nine percent perhaps should...

To access this complete feed in the blog feed reader login or register for free.

Negotiating Seder

Posted on April 20, 2008
Passover is my favorite Jewish holiday and one of the few days of the year for which I'm willing to spend at least two days grocery shopping, cleaning, cooking, buying flowers, and setting the table, not to mention printing out numerous Haggadahs from the internet for our dinner guests...

The Case for Settlement Counsel: Negotiation is Not a Competitive Sport

Posted on April 18, 2008
(right, the must-read Google Story) If the point of litigation is winning what is the point of settlement negotiations? Winning, right? Wrong. The point of settlement negotiations is to create durable agreements that sufficiently serve the parties' interests so that they will either stop bothering one another -- for which the LawGod created iron-clad releases -- or flourish in their mutual business venture...

Negotiating with Terrorists: Choosing Your Bargaining Partners

Posted on April 18, 2008
I do try not to stray into foreign affairs. Heck, negotiating with (not always rational) attorneys is difficult enough! Yet, occasionally, I mention negotiation in the context of international relations, as in my recent post -- Al Qaeda, Understanding the Bean-Counter Next Door -- which I knew might get some irritable comments...

Al Qaeda: Understanding the Bean-Counter Next Door

Posted on April 16, 2008
(pictured: papyrus scroll)It was with more than a little relief that I read today's L.A. Times article on Al Queda's internal organizational memoranda -- Penalty for Crossing an Al Qaeda Boss? A Nasty Memo.They are, after all, not so different from us as people, however far their ideologies radically depart from our own...

When you lift the rock of legal practice off your back . . .

Posted on April 15, 2008
. . . you tend to escape gravity in a fury of creative activity.Like this! The Spring issue of the r.kv.r.y. quarterly literary journal, which has just been published and is quickly approaching it's fourth anniversary. (see also r...

Ten Success Secrets from Top (Non-Starving) Mediators

Posted on April 14, 2008
I'll soon be teaching a short session on career development over at the Straus Institute with one of the hottest mediators in town -- the busily brilliant Lisa Klerman, formerly of Morrison & Foerster and for the past few years the head of the USC Law School's Mediation Clinic...

California Continues to Resist Preemptive Effect of Federal Arbitration Act

Posted on April 14, 2008
Just a quick note on a recent appellate case here holding that where the parties have agreed to conduct their arbitration in accordance with California law, the Federal Arbitration Act does not preempt state law on arbitrability. The case is Best Interiors, Inc...

Negotiating Law Firm Happiness: Partnership Compensation

Posted on April 11, 2008
I've got a little series on law firm happiness going on over at the tremendous workplace law resource Connecticut Employment Law Blog. Dan Schwartz, the dynamite Blog Meister behind Connecticut Employment Law had to take a blog break while actually TRYING A CASE (yes, people still DO)...

Live Blogging from Straus Conference Negotiating, Mediating and Managing Conflict: Evolution in a Global Society

Posted on April 10, 2008
9:00 a.m. sesstion: Culture, Tradition and Language in Cross-Border Negotiations and International Conflict presented by Professor John Barkai, University of Hawaii; Andrew Aglionby, Baker & McKenzie; and, Michael Zacharia, Former Exec. VP of Bus...

Consensus Building Tips from Work Life Bridge

Posted on April 09, 2008
Thanks to WorkLifeBridge for including us on its resource page. We're happpy to reciprocate and pleased to find another good source of information on collaboration, dispute resolution, and making life and work better for everyone. In their post Creepy Crawly Consensus, the authors of WorkLifeBridge direct their readers to some good consensus building resources...

Mediation Advocacy: the Self-Serving Bias

Posted on April 09, 2008
(top: we assimilate and organize data in our own favor: click here for full size chart) Despite our own beliefs that we've adequately analyzed the weaknesses in our own cases, we have all been told at one time or another that we are "buying our own bull%#@^...

Settlement of the Month: W.R. Grace Tentatively Settles Asbestos Claims

Posted on April 07, 2008
The Baltimore Business Journal announced today the W.R. Grace & Co. tentative $2B settlement on asbestos claims here. W.R. Grace & Co. Inc. has reached a proposed settlement of all current and future asbestos-related personal injury claims against the company -- a huge step toward Grace's goal of emerging from bankruptcy reorganization...

The Zero Sum Game: Allstate's McKinsey Documents

Posted on April 07, 2008
Back from the ABA's ADR Conference via Washington D.C., I've had a lot of fly-over state "quiet time" to ponder the gulf between mediation advocates (litigators) and mediators (former litigators who drink a little adversarial treason with their morning lattes)...

Post from Washington D.C.; Lincoln on Right, Wrong, War, Peace and Yes, It's Sunday, God

Posted on April 06, 2008
I read this on the wall of the Lincoln Memorial yesterday, after standing on the steps and imagining Dr. Martin Luther King Junior's "I Have a Dream Speech" (video and text here) forty years after his assassination and said to my husband -- "don't you long for leadership like this again?"See what Lincoln has to say about "God being on our side" and the end of negotiations in this short but stirring speech...

Post from Washington D.C.; Lincoln on Right, Wrong, War, Peace and Yes, It's Sunday, God

Ask for It: How Women Can Use the Power of Negotiation to Get What They Really Want

Posted on April 05, 2008
I didn't realize until I got onto the plane out of Seattle that Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever -- our morning plenary session speakers (Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide) -- have written a new book -- Ask for It -- How Women Can Use the Power of Negotiation to Get What They Really Want...

More Live Blogging from the Seattle ABA ADR Conference: Women Don't Ask and People at the Convention

Posted on April 04, 2008
Thanks to Jim Melamed of Mediate.com for the iphone photo taken Friday morning just before the frankly brilliant presentation by Linda C. Babcock and Sara Laschever, authors of the must-read Women Don't Ask, Negotiation and the Gender Divide (men who don't like to negotiate should snap this book up as well -- you can put one of those brown paper covers on it or slip it into the mid-section of Esquire on the plane)...

Ask for It: How Women Can Use the Power of Negotiation to Get What They Really Want

Posted on April 04, 2008
I didn't realize until I got onto the plane out of Seattle that Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever -- our morning plenary session speakers (Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide) -- have written a new book -- Ask for It -- How Women Can Use the Power of Negotiation to Get What They Really Want...

Guilt-Based Apologies as Used in 12-Step Programs

Posted on April 02, 2008
Once again, from my article Shame by Any Other Name (etc.) here:Understanding the differences between guilt and shame make even ordinary attempts to apologize and mend relationships damaged by careless, selfish or unkind acts, easier to understand and manage...

Original Faith on the Spiritual Benefits of Forgiveness

Posted on April 02, 2008
Though I don't often avert to religion or spirituality, my own values are firmly grounded in mid-century mainstream Protestantism -- most prominent of which are compassion, tolerance, apology, forgiveness, reconciliation and the very real and ever present potential for the redemption of the human spirit...

Mediation Advocacy: Priming Mediator and the Opposition with a Collaborative Brand

Posted on April 02, 2008
Can you marry a blog? If so, we're ready to propose to Deliberations, which is packed with more good advocacy tips than we can incorporate into our negotiation blog advice. Today, Deliberation's Anne Reed brings us the following useful information in The Brand Name Brain...

Mediator Ethics: Conflicts of Interest

Posted on March 31, 2008
1. Steadfast adherence to a strict moral or ethical code. 2. The state of being unimpaired; soundness. 3. The quality or condition of being whole or undivided; completeness. ETYMOLOGY: Middle English integrite, from Old French, from Latin integrits, soundness, from integer, whole, complete...

Apology: Shame, Guilt, Rupture and Repair

Posted on March 31, 2008
A friend of mine once told me that "the most successful learning dyad in the history of the world" is the mother-infant/child relationship. Contemporary psychologists who have studied that relationship have discovered that toddlers whose caretakers help them "repair" the loving relationship that existed before the moment shame is elicited, learn guilt and apology instead of chronic shame and denial or withdrawal...

Apology: Shame, Guilt, Rupture and Repair

Mediator Ethics: Conflicts of Interest

Apology: the Guilt Ridden vs. the Shame Infused

Posted on March 29, 2008
(thanks to Beyond Intractability for the graphic)We talk a lot about apology as a means of descalating conflict for the purpose of engaging in successfully mediated settlement conferences and non-mediated commercial negotiations alike. You can bargain with someone who is enraged at (or even merely irritable with) you, but your negotiation will be derailed over and over again as feelings interfere with business judgment...

Previous | Next

Related Law Bulletins

New Baptist Covenant Blog
Last week, I pointed to the New Baptist Convenant website, now onl...

The Mexico Trucker Blog
I've written before about the perceived problems with relaxed rest...