Just Court ADR

Our series, My Favorite Resource, features interviews with our court ADR friends across the country to learn about their favorite resource. Prior to the COVID-19 epidemic, Resource Center Director Nicole Wilmet spoke with John Lande, Isidor Loeb Professor Emeritus at the University of Missouri School of Law, to learn about his favorite ADR resources.

NW: What are some of your favorite ADR resources?

JL: I have been developing resources throughout my career, and I appreciate the opportunity to share these resources designed for practitioners, academics and students. I developed the following resources on my own or in collaboration with various colleagues.

My website includes practical forms I developed when I was in practice, materials for teaching courses, links to ADR resources and links to my publications. Readers can download for free my articles and a new edited book, Theories of Change for the Dispute Resolution Movement: Actionable Ideas to Revitalize Our Movement. The website also includes information about my two books published by the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution: Litigation Interest and Risk Assessment: Help Your Clients Make Good Litigation Decisions (with Michaela Keet and Heather Heavin) andLawyering with Planned Early Negotiation: How You Can Get Good Results for Clients and Make Money.

The Dispute Resolution Resources for Legal Education (DRLE) website, hosted by the University of Missouri School of Law, provides a wealth of resources for law school faculty including an extensive collection of syllabi for a wide range of courses, teaching materials, a list of dispute resolution programs at American law schools, links to other resources and information about the DRLE listserv.

The Stone Soup Dispute Resolution Knowledge Project is part of the DRLE website with lots of additional resources. It is designed to promote collaboration by faculty, students, scholars, practitioners, educational institutions and professional associations to produce, disseminate and use valuable qualitative data about actual dispute resolution practice. It provides an extensive collection of materials to (1) help faculty develop course assignments requiring students to learn about dispute resolution in real life and (2) help generate knowledge from student competitions and continuing education programs. It also includes a “mini-course” of blog posts about research on dispute resolution and how faculty can incorporate Stone Soup in their courses and scholarship.

The Legal Education, ADR, and Practical Problem-Solving (LEAPS) Project of the ADR in Law Schools Committee of the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution is designed to help faculty incorporate “practical problem-solving” (PPS) into a wide range of courses, including doctrinal, litigation, transactional and ADR courses. The website provides descriptions of various teaching methodologies, suggestions for how to engage colleagues in teaching more PPS in their courses, “talking points” for discussing the incorporation of PPS into doctrinal courses, a survey of how schools integrate PPS skills in their curricula, lists of consultants who can help with specific courses, suggestions for making discussions with faculty as productive as possible, examples of course exercises, approaches to introducing PPS in doctrinal courses and teaching materials and links to relevant resources on other websites.

The Planned Early Dispute Resolution (PEDR) Project of the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution promotes use of planned early dispute resolution techniques by lawyers and clients at the earliest appropriate time. The website includes the PEDR user guide, separate powerpoints for talks to groups of lawyers and business people and suggestions for speakers.

This post includes resources from the 2016 University of Missouri symposium, Moving Negotiation Theory from the Tower of Babel Toward a World of Mutual Understanding. It includes the articles from the symposium, an annotated reading list, blog posts with “virtual book club” conversations discussing the readings and videos of the symposium sessions.

More generally, I like the Indisputably blog, where I am one of nine bloggers writing about a wide range of dispute resolution issues. The bloggers are all law school faculty but many of the posts should be of interest to a wide variety of others interested in dispute resolution.

I also want to mention a different kind of resource. Since 1993, I have been taking photos of friends and colleagues at ADR events and I posted a collection of photo albums from these events. Our sense of identity in belonging to our wonderful community is an important resource and looking at photos of us is a great way to appreciate it.

NW: Why do you value these resources?

JL: I’m a teacher and coach at heart and I want to help people learn cool and non-obvious insights, gain important skills and help others in turn. These resources don’t claim to provide the “best” or “right” way to analyze things or to act. Rather they provide ideas and options for people to consider as they make their own decisions.

NW: Can you share a time when you turned to one of these resources for either insight or to assist you in your work and how it was helpful to you?

JL: As a professor, the collection of syllabi was especially helpful to see how other faculty taught their courses. This gave me ideas about how to structure my courses and what readings to assign.

NW: You have such an impressive collection of resources here. What advice would you give to someone who is either just starting or hoping to develop a collection of reliable ADR resources?

JL: The goal of a resource developer should be to help people do what they want to do. So, I would think about what people need in particular situations and what could help them achieve their goals and solve their problems. It helps to have been in the situation, which enables one to better understand others’ needs and what would be most helpful.

People have limited attention spans, so it’s important to be as concise as possible while providing the key material that people need. Generally, eliminate unnecessary words, use short sentences and paragraphs whenever appropriate and leave “white space’ to make it easier for readers to grasp the ideas. I try to write in plain English, spiced with a dash of humor. Here’s a post with more suggestions for writing well.

Our series, My Favorite Resource, features interviews with our court ADR friends across the country to learn about their favorite resource. This month, Resource Center Director Nicole Wilmet spoke with Joel Shapiro, Chief Circuit Mediator for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Mediation Program, to learn about his favorite resource.

NW: What is your favorite ADR resource?

JS: For information, I turn to RSI. (Seriously, there is no better source to keep up with developments in ADR in Illinois and around the country.) For insight and guidance, I turn to my immediate professional community – the cadre of forty to fifty mediators who work full-time for the federal appellate and district courts. We are few enough to feel connected and to call on one another when the need arises. Of course, the closest to hand are my fellow Seventh Circuit Mediators. We consult informally on a daily basis and have lunch together once a week to make sure we stay in touch. 

NW: Can you share an example of when you turned to your network for support?

JS: Confidentiality is fundamental in mediation, even more so when mediation is conducted under the aegis of the court. Dilemmas regarding confidentiality arise from time to time, requiring principled and pragmatic responses. Years ago, I was subpoenaed to give testimony and produce my notes in a state court action to enforce a settlement I had mediated. In addition to consulting the Judiciary’s Office of Legal Counsel and the leadership of my court, I asked colleagues in other circuits how they had responded to similar demands. Those conversations reinforced my own belief that I must not comply with the subpoena unless directed to do so by the Court of Appeals. I requested representation from the Office of the U.S. Attorney, which removed the subpoena to federal district court and successfully moved to quash it. 

NW: In what ways have you found that your network has been better able to serve your needs than a traditional print resource?

JS: Whatever the commonalities among mediators and mediations, performing this work as court staff is a specialized role. My counterparts in the other federal courts share that experience and an outlook rooted in the utmost respect for judicial institutions. They “know the territory.” Their collective wisdom is not available in traditional print resources.  Perhaps it should be.

NW: What do you value most about the input you receive from your network?

JS: The input I receive from my network is generous, honest, on-point, and well-informed. I know I can count on my “posse.”

NW: How did you develop your network and what would you recommend for someone looking to develop their network?

JS: In the performance of their regular duties, Chief Circuit Mediators meet at least once a year and confer intermittently by phone and email. The entire corps of federal appellate and district court staff mediators meets biennially for a three-day workshop sponsored by the Federal Judicial Center. These periodic meetings are the trellis on which our network has developed. In addition, I host monthly conference calls that are in the nature of “self-reflective practice” conversations. Those sessions, populated by eight or ten colleagues at a time, provide an opportunity to think deeply about our work, help one another “brainstorm” about particular day-to-day challenges, and continually reaffirm the values and friendships that bind us together. 

If someone were looking to develop a network of mutually supportive ADR practitioners, I would suggest they form a self-reflective practice group – it could be as few as three or four colleagues – whose shared professional experience and values can create a foundation of trust.  Mediators who have done this find it to be not only informative but invigorating. Anyone who would like to tap into my thoughts about “self-reflective practice” is welcome to contact me at joel_shapiro@ca7.uscourts.gov.