Add Your PerspectiveMarch 30, 2012

Because the Other Side Has a Perspective

Sometimes I don’t need to hear why, or how, it happened — the thing just speaks for itself.  A few months ago I read an article in The New York Times and made up my mind by the third line, which detailed the audience’s anger as “a cellphone began ringing – and ringing, ringing, ringing without cease – during a performance by the New York Philharmonic.”  Through first-hand accounts available from thousandfold echo, Superconductor, and Max Kinchen, we now know that no one cared why, or how, it happened.  Fellow concertgoers yelled, “Thousand dollar fine!”, “Get out!”, and “Kick him out!”.

Later I learned the rest of the story, and the case of the unrelenting marimba ringtone is now an easy way to More…

Categories: Communication,Fundamentals,Mediation,Negotiation

2 PerspectivesAugust 17, 2011

Breaking Impasse in Mediation: The Book

Impasse in mediation is an important topic to mediators, lawyers and the clients they serve, and I’m no exception — links to my prior posts on breaking impasse in negotiation can be found here and here, and a .pdf of a longer paper I delivered more than a few years ago can be found here.  I’m happy to say that the New York State Bar Association has just published a helpful new resource that can help us all avoid impasse in settlement negotiations: Definitive Creative Impasse-Breaking Techniques in Mediation.

In the spirit of full disclosure, my chapter on “High-Low Agreements and More: Definitive Tools to Break Impasse in Mediation” is among those in the book, which contains 19 chapters filled with real tips and tactics you’ll be able to apply in your next mediation.  As you can see from the book’s Table of Contents and Contributor Biographies, our (persistent and helpful) editor Molly Kapper, J.D., Ph.D. pulled together some of the best mediation personalities and commentators in the business:

Editor: Molly Klapper, J.D., Ph.D.

Authors:

• Simeon H. Baum, Esq.
• Professor Vivian Berger
• John DeGroote, Esq.
• Julie Denny
• Hon. William A. Dreier
• Professor Dwight Golann More…

Categories: Mediation,Negotiation,Settlement,Strategy,Tactics

2 PerspectivesMay 12, 2011

Don Philbin and Doug Noll: Two More Reasons to Go to Malibu this June

Longtime readers know I’m a big fan of training programs at Pepperdine’s Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution, but our friends in Malibu have just given us two more reasons to come back for the 24th Annual Summer Professional Skills Program in Dispute Resolution – Don Philbin and Douglas Noll.

You probably know Don as a mediator or through his work on adrtoolbox.com or his often-cited Harvard Negotiation Law Review article, and you likely know Doug from his numerous books, his mediation practice focusing on “difficult, complex, and intractable conflicts,” and his various works at lawyertopeacemaker.com – but what you may not know is that they have teamed up to teach a cutting-edge class at Pepperdine this summer to help mediators, lawyers and their clients achieve better settlements from the Monday after the training ends.

Preventing Bad Settlement Decisions and More

Philbin and Noll have agreed to cover several critical topics in the three-day course, most of which are neglected or underserved in mediation training – the title to their course is “Preventing Bad Settlement Decisions and Impasse Using More…

Categories: ADR,Education,Mediation,Negotiation

5 PerspectivesJune 7, 2010

Negotiating through Impasse: A Paper from the Archives

a .pdf copy of “Break that Impasse:  Practical Solutions to Eliminate Deadlock in Settlement Negotiations” is available here

Lately I have heard about impasse more often than normal — Marc Lanzkowsky posted 3 Settlement Techniques that Will Help Move a Case to Resolution on The Claims SPOT, which drove a great follow-on discussion about impasse among LinkedIn’s Commercial and Industry Arbitration and Mediation Group.  As the comments continued, I thought about how much we all try to avoid — or work through — impasse, and an old article of mine came to mind.  This is a quick post intended to reintroduce that article to the discussion.

Break that Impasse:  Practical Suggestions to Eliminate Deadlock

It seems like only yesterday, but in 2004 I co-presented  Break that Impasse: Practical Suggestions to Eliminate Deadlock in Settlement Negotiations to the Association of Corporate Counsel’s Annual Meeting in Chicago with an all-star group of copanelists, including Eric D. Green, Ross W. Stoddard, Melvin S. Merzon and Mark Tatelbaum.  The paper, available here, is more than a few years old and I wrote it before my mediation training (so all disclaimers apply), but “Break that Impasse” includes:

• 20+ pages of ideas about how to prevent and break impasse — written primarily from the client’s perspective;
• Over 100 footnotes to mediators, judges, lawyers, clients and others who contributed their ideas to the paper; and
• A sample mediator’s proposal form, supplied by copanelist Ross Stoddard.

Take a look at “Break that Impasse” the next time impasse approaches — I hope it helps.

Categories: ADR,Fundamentals,Mediation,Negotiation,Settlement,Tactics