On May 1, 2024, the Senate Judiciary Committee of the California legislature passed a heavily amended Senate Bill 940 aimed at regulating both arbitration and mediation services in California. According to a Los Angeles Daily Journal article published on May 2, 2024 (subscription only), the arbitration provisions may well run [Read More]
This past week, I taught my last class for the semester at the University of Southern California's Gould School of Law. The online course entitled Employment Dispute Mediation teaches the students how to mediate "from soup to nuts." Many of the students are Human Resource (HR) professionals, which makes my [Read More]
I stumbled upon a study entitled “Settlementality” by Jessica Bregant, Jennifer K. Robbennolt & Verity Winship which surveyed over 1,000 U. S. adults on their basic knowledge of settlements and what. If any, role the courts and contract law play in settlement. (Id. at 1.) Although their results were mixed [Read More]
Last weekend, I attended a conference of fellow mediators. One of the points raised was that mediating via Zoom, or any other video-conference platform requires a different skill set and for those new mediators (of less than three years) , it may be the only skill set they know. That [Read More]
Several weeks ago, I wrote a blog about a New York Times article on apologizing and how to do so like you mean it. The article notes that an apology has to be carefully orchestrated and contain certain elements for it to be effective: express regret, explain but keep it [Read More]
Recently, I stumbled upon an article about women, fear and decision making. According to a recent study published in PLOS, these three concepts are related: … fear may affect women’s decisions in choosing immediate rewards versus larger delayed ones, while men’s decisions appear unaffected by emotion, …. (Science Daily at [Read More]
This semester I am teaching an online Employment Dispute Mediation course at USC Gould School of Law. Using employment law as the substantive vehicle, I am teaching my students essentially how to be mediators from “soup to nuts.” In teaching them how to mediate, I note to my students repeatedly [Read More]
Apologies are hard. Many folks have a really hard time saying, “I am sorry.” Instead, they sort of apologize by saying something like “I am sorry it happened to you” or “I am sorry you feel that way” or just “Sorry.” What most folks do not realize is that these [Read More]
