Mediating Disputes
This workshop will provide you with core mediation skills training and hands-on experience as a mediator in a variety of simulations. The course examines the mediation process through the lens of both caucus and non-caucus models of practice, and considers the role of law, as well as interest-based bargaining, in shaping mediated settlements. In addition, the course addresses legal and ethical issues in mediation, and the psychological dimensions of the mediation process. The course faculty are leading practitioners in the field of mediation as well as thought leaders in the field.
Acquire and improve your basic mediation skills and deepen your knowledge
In this intensive program, you will acquire and improve your practical mediation skills and techniques for facilitating negotiations between disputing parties. Whether your interest is in family, employment, public policy or business disagreements, you will discover effective ways to settle differences and mediate disputes using a variety of techniques, using a proven toolkit that is indispensible to those who are involved in dispute resolution, such as:
- Using active listening techniques, neutral language, and the loop of understanding
- Eliciting the parties’ underlying interests and distinguishing those from their bargaining positions
- Managing emotions, reframing, and promoting mutual understanding
- Assisting the parties in generating options for mutual gain
- Helping the parties analyze the opportunities and risks of litigation as an alternative to a mediated settlement
- Dealing with difficult personalities
- Deploying impasse-breaking techniques
The faculty will walk you through the various stages of mediation, will demonstrate techniques developed from actual mediation cases, and discuss the strategic decisions that mediators make, including whether to use a caucus-based or non-caucus model of mediation. Lecture and discussion topics include ethics, psychology, the role of counsel, and cultural and diversity issues in mediation. In addition, the course will include a discussion of different mediation styles such as facilitative, directive, and transformative. However, the primary focus will be hands-on experience in mediation role plays and simulations, so that every participant will have opportunities to mediate.
Whether you wish to add mediation to your law practice, improve your ability to mediate disputes, become a professional mediator, or explore incorporating other mediation techniques into your work in any field, you will emerge with a toolkit of concepts and skills that you can apply throughout your career.
Learning objectives
During this intensive five-day program, you will:
- Broaden your understanding of ways to resolve disputes
- Become more comfortable with the role of mediator and diverse mediation styles
- Enhance your ability to listen, express empathy, develop options, understand interests, and build agreements
- Examine the ethical dilemmas and legal dimensions of mediation practice
- Learn how to preserve value and relationships through mediation
- Acquire improved problem-solving negotiation techniques
- Gain insights as to the role of lawyers in mediation
Who should attend?
This program is appropriate for lawyers who are interested in adding mediation to their practice, judges who are interested in setting up court-based mediation programs, and other professionals who wish to develop or enhance conflict resolution skills. While prior familiarity with mediation is encouraged, we welcome professionals from all backgrounds, industries, and countries who wish to improve their ability to resolve disputes. Previous participants have included lawyers, judges, teachers, doctors, ministers, managers, directors, executives, and administrators.
To deliver the personalized learning experience for which this program is known, enrollment is strictly limited to 48 participants.
Due to the interactive and simulation-rich nature of the training, participants must demonstrate proficiency in English, as this program is conducted solely in English. Participants should be able to converse fluently in dialogue with the instructor and other students. While a certification of fluency in English is not required, we suggest a TOEFL written exam score of 570 as the minimum proficiency standard.
Format
Featuring lectures, interactive discussions, small group and one-on-one exercises, and mediation simulations, this intensive program is designed to actively engage you in the mediation process. Key to the program is the opportunity to mediate a dispute from beginning to end and to explore your own mediation technique and skills, including feedback both from fellow participants and program faculty.
Credits and Certificates
Upon successful completion of this program, you will receive a Certificate of Completion. Certificates are distributed on the final day of the program. This program has been approved for continuing legal education (CLE) credits in the United States. The approval often includes ethics hours.
Recommended Course Materials and Reference Books
- Beyond Winning: Negotiating to Create Value in Deals and Disputes – Robert H. Mnookin, Scott R. Peppet and Andrew S. Tulumello (Belnap, 2004)
- Challenging Conflict: Mediation Through Understanding – Gary J. Friedman, Jack Himmelstein (American Bar Association, 2008)
- Bringing Peace Into the Room: How the Personal Qualities of the Mediator Impact the Process of Conflict Resolution – Daniel Bowling, David A. Hoffman (Editors, Jossey-Bass 2003)
Reading assignments and other reading materials will be sent to participants via email prior to the start of the course.
Dates, Tuition, and Location
Dates: June 3-7, 2013
Tuition: 5-day workshop: $4,997
Reduced tuition of $3,750 is available for judges, government officials, full-time teachers, and full-time staff and lawyers at public interest organizations. Applicants requesting reduced tuition are required to submit a letter of employment verification. We do not offer financial aid.
Location: The course will be held at the Sheraton Commander Hotel, located within minutes of the Harvard Law School campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
FALL PROGRAM FACULTY
Harvard Negotiation Institute (HNI) programs are led by a distinguished team of educators, authors, thought leaders, and practitioners. Acknowledged experts in their fields, HNI faculty draw on the latest thinking and research to deliver practical techniques and real-world strategies for effectively conducting personal and professional negotiations.
Robert H. Mnookin
Robert H. Mnookin is the Samuel Williston Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, the Chair of the Steering Committee of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, and the Director of the Harvard Negotiation Research Project. A leading scholar and expert in the field of conflict resolution, Professor Mnookin has applied his interdisciplinary approach to negotiation and conflict resolution to a remarkable range of problems; both public and private. An experienced mediator, Prof. Robert Mnookin has successfully mediated many complex commercial disputes which involved advanced technologies and intellectual property. He has written or edited nine books and numerous scholarly articles. A renowned teacher and lecturer, Prof. Robert Mnookin has taught numerous workshops for corporations, governmental agencies and law firms throughout the world and trained many executives and professionals. in negotiation and mediation skills.
Gary J. Friedman
Gary J. Friedman has been practicing law as a mediator with Mediation Law Offices in Mill Valley, California, since 1976, integrating mediative principles into the practice of law and the resolution of legal disputes. Through the non-profit organization which he co-founded, The Center for Understanding in Conflict (formerly The Center for Mediation in Law), he has been teaching mediation since 1980. Prior to his work as a mediator, he practiced law as a trial lawyer with Friedman and Friedman in Bridgeport, Connecticut. After several years as an advocate, he sought a new approach to resolving disputes through increasing the participation of the parties in the resolution of their differences. At that time, he and his colleague, Jack Himmelstein, began to develop a model of mediation — the Understanding Based Model — that is now practiced extensively in the United States and Europe.
David A. Hoffman
David A. Hoffman is the founding member of Boston Law Collaborative, LLC, and teaches the Mediation course at Harvard Law School, where he is the John H. Watson, Jr. Lecturer on Law. David’s practice is focused on resolving conflict in business, family, and employment cases. He has served as mediator and/or arbitrator in more than a thousand commercial, family, employment, construction, personal injury, insurance, and other business cases. David is the past chair of the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolution and a founding member of the Massachusetts Collaborative Law Council. Before founding BLC, David was a partner at Hill & Barlow in Boston, where he was a litigator, family law attorney, mediator and arbitrator. David has led mediation trainings for the ABA, the American Arbitration Association, the Association for Conflict Resolution, a variety of state and federal courts, and other organizations in the United States and overseas.
Samuel Dinnar
Samuel “Mooly” Dinnar is an experienced strategy, venture and negotiations consultant to businesses, investors, non-profits and individuals. Along with providing negotiation services, training, coaching, mediation, and dispute resolution assistance. Dinnar has conducted hands-on strategy work, re-positioning, marketing and entrepreneurial initiatives with entrepreneurs, start-ups and investors. Dinnar brings over 20 years of general management, strategic growth and operations team leadership with an exceptional track record of corporate growth, mergers & acquisitions, value-creating product management, multifaceted sales and business development in hi-tech and aerospace. In addition to being part of two start-ups that revolutionized their industry, Dinnar has international experience as an entrepreneur, executive, board member and venture capital investor, based on technical degrees in aerospace engineering and computer sciences, as well as business management education from the Harvard Business School.
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Robert H. Mnookin is the Samuel Williston Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, the Chair of the Executive Committee, Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, and the Director of the Harvard Negotiation Research Project. A leading scholar in the field of conflict resolution, Professor Mnookin has applied his interdisciplinary approach to negotiation and conflict resolution to a remarkable range of problems, both public and private.
Gary J. Friedman has bee practicing law as a mediation with the MEdiation Law Offices in Mill Valley, California, since 1976, integrating meditative principles into the practice of law and the resolution of legal disputes. Through the non-profit organization which he co-founded, The Center for Understanding in Conflict (formerly the Center for Mediation in Law), he has been teaching mediation since 1980.
David A. Hoffman is an attorney, mediator, arbitrator, and founding member of Boston Law Collaborative, LLC. David teaches the Mediation course at Harvard Law School, where he is the John H. Watson Jr. Lecturer on Law, and co-teaches the Mediation course at the Harvard Negotiation Institute of the Program on Negotiation. He has also been the lead trainer in several mediation trainings for the American Bar Association.
Samuel “Mooly” Dinnar is an experienced strategy, venture and negotiations consultant to businesses, investors, non-profits and individuals. Along with providing negotiation services, training, coaching, mediation, and dispute resolution assistance,.
