Communique - CNDR's Newsletter
December 2010

Summer in San Francisco

Travel to the beautiful San Francisco Bay Area during summer 2011 and study ADR in a vibrant ADR community!

Next summer CNDR will sponsor its first annual Court ADR Systems Design Institute. This 5-day interactive workshop, "Envisioning, Designing & Implementing Court ADR: A Practical and Theoretical Program," will be open to foreign judges, lawyers, and court administrators interested in developing court ADR programs in their home countries. Many of the best court ADR programs in the United States are located within a few blocks of Hastings, and institute participants will have the opportunity to observe some of these programs during their stay. The program will also offer email follow-up with the instructors as participants begin to turn theory into practice upon returning home. The lead instructors will be three of the most experienced U.S. ADR Program Directors: Sheila Purcell of the San Mateo County Superior Court, Howard Herman of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and Claudia Bernard of the U.S. Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit. The Court ADR Systems Design Institute will be held June 20-24, 2011, and applications will be available shortly (email cndr@uchastings.edu for further information).

In addition, a second CNDR program, to be held July 25-August 5, will offer intensive mediation training to foreign lawyers. This training will be open to incoming Hastings LLM students and to other non-U.S. lawyers interested in developing mediation skills. Finally, after a successful inauguration last year, Hastings will continue its summer school offerings for JD students in 2011. Two 3-unit intensive Negotiation classes will be offered July 18-29 for US law students, along with several doctrinal courses.

We're Going to Nationals!

With only one competition under our belts since the intensive "Negotiation Boot Camp" and In School Competition, in which we selected the 35 best student negotiators out of a field of 95, we are over the moon with joy that we will be competing in the invitation-only ABA National Negotiation Competition, held this year in Atlanta, Georgia.

Ryan Cunningham and Christoffer Lee competed in a pool of 28 teams at the University of Denver School of Law, winning every round they were in, and entering the final round in first place overall, after receiving a #1 ranking from 5 of their 6 judges.  In the final round on Sunday morning, the dynamic duo won their match, and won the votes of all four judges.  However, the ABA's rules for the competition dictate that there is a "declared winner", and ultimately the panel selected the team from the University of Utah, a team Hastings never saw nor competed against, as the champions of the competition.  Chris and Ryan officially finished in third place.

A week later, Hastings received an invitation from the ABA to compete in the National Negotiation Competition.  As it turned out, all three top finishers in Denver were invited to the competition.  We are very happy that Ryan and Chris will be competing at the ABA National Negotiation Championship, one of the few championships Hastings has yet to win.

Caitlin Daniel and Mara Boundy also competed in Denver, and had a strong top 10 finish, a mere two points away from getting into the final round.

The competition season will begin in earnest this January, as the team travels to Lynchburg, VA to compete in Liberty University School of Law's National Negotiations Competition.  Then, it's off to Paris for the ICC International Commercial Mediation Competition, Atlanta for the ABA National Negotiation Competition, Moscow (Idaho) for the ABA Regional Representation in Mediation Competition, Toronto for the International Competition for Mediation Advocacy, San Francisco for the California State Bar's Environmental Negotiation Competition, and then to London for the International Academy of Dispute Resolution's Mediation Tournament.

Lie to Me?!!

Most symposia involve speakers, PowerPoint presentations, and discussion amongst panelists and participants.  CNDR's Lie to Me?!!  How Emotions Matter in Negotiation symposium included these, and periods of utter silence.  Not awkward silence, but the silence of mindfulness.  Shuana Shapiro, co-author of the American Psychology Association Book, The Art and Science of Mindfulness, led a guided mediation, as did Charlie Halpern, author of Making Waves and Riding the Currents: Activism and the Practice of Wisdom.

The morning began with Hastings Professor Clark Freshman interviewing Dr. Paul Ekman, renowned pioneer in the study of emotions and facial expressions, and one of the most eminent psychologists of the twentieth century.  Dr. Ekman spoke of the effect of his mother's suicide when he was 14 on his career choices and of the profound emotional transformation he experienced after meeting and becoming close to the Dalai Lama. 

The day progressed with lively presentations by Professor Peter Carnevale, from the USC School of Business, and Professor Michael Wheeler, from the Harvard Business School , on their research on emotion in negotiation.  Carnevale discussed work exploring people's interactions with computer generated images of people and the implications for negotiation.  Wheeler discussed research on people's emotional experience and attitudes toward negotiation through collages that subjects assemble.  He emphasized the importance of the context in which emotions occur, the flow of various emotions as a negotiation progresses, and techniques for individuals to achieve the emotional state they prefer in negotiations.

Erika Rosenberg and Cliff Saron, researchers at the Center for Mind and Brain at the University of California, Davis, presented unpublished findings in their ongoing collaborative research project based on Ekman's facial coding system, on improvements in sustained attention with intensive meditation training.  Professor Clark Freshman raised several issues regarding the ethics of using emotion detection and awareness in negotiation - people can use these skills compassionately or they can use them exploitatively.  Use of such skills may be beneficial for an individual, but are they beneficial to society as a whole?  Do they enable us to better deviate from our values in order to achieve personal gain?

The day was rounded out with presentations by Hastings Adjunct Professor Jason Meek and Adjunct Professor Madeleine Bernhardt from the Berlin School of Economics and Law.  Meek discussed the use of emotion in his business practice as well as in the classroom with law students, advocating for a more humanistic and accepting approach to both.  Bernhardt discussed emotion within the German Courts, and how Germany's fascist history has led to a distrust of emotion as a tool for manipulation.

Hastings Center for Negotiation and Dispute Resolution would like to thank all who participated in the day's thought provoking presentations and discussion.  If you are interested in viewing the presentations and reviewing the materials published for the symposium, you can register for the long distance education program.

No Rest for the Weary, Wicked or Wise

The fall of 2010 was an extremely busy one for the Center for Negotiation and Dispute Resolution, as it adjusted to a changing of the guard, with Professor Melissa Nelken taking over the CNDR reins, and Professor Grande Lum leaving for his new job in the Obama Administration.  (By the way, Grande is enjoying his work in Washington DC, but hasn't forgotten us.  He sends his good wishes to you all.)  In addition to the Lie to Me?!! symposium, this is what we've been up to.

Every fall begins with recruitment and selection for the Negotiation team.  We had 95 students try out for the team this year, participating in six trainings and practices over the course of three weeks.  75 volunteers, including Hastings alumni and local practitioners, coached practices and judged the In School Competition.  Thank you, everyone, for all your support.  We literally would not have this successful program without you!

With so many changes in the department, we revised our well received brochure from last year to include our newest faculty member, Professor Carol Izumi.  The brochure was mailed to Law Schools and ADR practitioners across the country.  Have you seen it yet?  View our latest brochure.

Professor Clark Freshman continued his empirical research project on training lie detection and how to teach this skill to students, with two workshops designed for students taking negotiation.  He also published an article in the Nevada Law Journal entitled "Yes, and: Core Concerns, Internal Mindfulness, and External Mindfulness for Emotional Balance, Lie Detection, and Successful Negotiation".  In addition to being the mastermind of our own symposium (see Lie to Me?!!), Clark spoke at the Mindful Lawyer Conference held at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.  He also conducted a CLE program, Credibility in Lie Detection for Judges, in San Diego for the National Federation of Administrative Law Judges.  Currently, Clark is preparing for a day-long CLE seminar in January, The Science Behind Lie to Me: How to Win Using Lie Detection & Microexpression Analysis.  Learn more about this seminar.

Did you know that October is Mediation Month?  In collaboration with the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution, CNDR organized a number of tabling events to inform students about the benefits of mediation, and how they might pursue a career in alternative dispute resolution.  The month's events culminated on Mediation Day, October 21^st, with a reception for students and local ADR practitioners and administrators from nearby courts.

As a result of the overwhelming success in training utility employees in San Diego on Transacting Business with the California Public Utilities Commission last year, another utility company requested our services for their employees.  Clinical Professor Eumi Lee presented this interactive training in Los Angeles.

Professor Carol Izumi hit the ground running in her first semester at Hastings with her forthcoming article Implicit Bias and the Illusion of Mediator Neutrality in the Washington University Journal of Law and Policy.  She has also been working on the 2^nd edition of her book, Race, Rights and Reparation: Law and the Japanese American Internment, to be published in time for fall 2011 course adoption.  At CNDR's ADR Salon, Carol presented "Mediation of Criminal Cases", an account of her work in the Washington DC area mediating criminal cases and how such a program might be established in the San Francisco Bay Area.  She is currently preparing a presentation to the Mediation Society on Implicit Bias in Mediators, and a presentation along with Fred Butler for the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution's Annual Spring Conference entitled "Mediating in the Obama Era: Is it a Post-Racial World?"

CNDR invited Colin Rule, Director of Online Dispute Resolution for eBay and PayPal, to speak at Hastings in November.  Online Dispute Resolution is a growing field, and according to Rule, it is where the field of law and conflict resolution is heading.  In addition to making a very engaging presentation to students about the growth of ODR at eBay and PayPal, he talked about an upcoming international ODR conference with a website already full of information about ODR (www.ODR2011.org).  Following up on his presentation, an interested Hastings student has already arranged an ADR externship with him for the spring semester.

Finally, Acting Director and Faculty Chair Melissa Nelken, in addition to steering the CNDR ship, is pleased to report that her recent article, If I'd Wanted to Teach About Feelings, I Wouldn't Have Become a Law Professor (co-authored with Andrea Schneider and Jamil Mahuad) was recently listed on the Social Science Research Network's Top Ten download list for Cognitive Social Science eJournal.  Read Melissa's article. She has also been working with the ADR Directors of the San Mateo County Superior Court, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal to develop a Dispute Systems Design course for foreign lawyers, judges and court administrators, to be held at Hastings, June 20-24, 2011. Several other ADR courses, for JD students and for foreign lawyers are also planned (see Summer ADR Programs for more details).