The Red Velvet Lawyer

A decade after his first “grid” article, described in my last posting  here , Professor Len Riskin looked again at the question of mediator style, orientation, or strategies.  Perhaps influenced by his 20-year experience in mediation, or by his understanding of “living in the moment” derived from his mindfulness meditation practice, or perhaps because of the increasingly shriller debate about which style was “best,”   he took a more nuanced and fresh look at the original grid.   See  Leonard Riskin,  Who Decides What? Rethinking the Grid of Mediator Orientations , 9 No.2 Disp. Resol. J. 22 (2003).     He now suggests, I think, that we mediators should be gentler with each other.  Instead of labeling ourselves and each other (bad, bad evaluator or flakey, inefficient facilitator, or weird transformative mediator), mediators can ask instead what the parties need in the moment.  Mediators can also listen better when the p...

In 1994, Len Riskin, then the C.A. Leedy Professor of Law at the University of Missouri-Columbia and Director of its Center for the Study of Dispute Resolution, inadvertently started a great debate about what “style” of mediation was “best.”   When he published the article entitled, Mediator Orientations, Strategies and Techniques , 12 Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation 111 (1994), he described four styles of mediation based on how broadly the mediator defined the problem presented by the parties (and thus the depth of intervention the mediator was likely to take) and the role of the mediator -- either facilitative or evaluative.   According to this analytical scheme, a mediator could be: narrow/facilitative, narrow/evaluative, broad/facilitative or broad/evaluative.   The two-dimensional grid based on this analysis supposedly predicts the strategies each type of mediator is likely to use, and, Riskin thought at the time, the amount of self-determination the...

Solo practice, a no doubt terrifying option for most new graduates, still remains an option for lawyers.   Many resources exists to help new solos.  An article published recently, lists a few of them  here . I am also following several blogs focused on solo practice that you can easily access through this blog site.  A much longer list of relevant blogs appears here .  Recently, we offered students a one day workshop on going solo.  It covered: Assessing the Risks and Rewards of Being a Lawyerpreneur  Financing a Solo Practice  Trust Accounts  Income Tax Implications of Solo Practice  Legal Research Resources  Law Office Technology  Ethics  Marketing a Solo Practice, and  Tips from an Alumna For a free scanned copy of these materials, send me an email at pyoung@asl.edu.   Interestingly, the alumna who offered advice to students told me she had turned down a job in the local Commonwealth A...

Recently, Above the Law decided to develop its own law school ranking system based on employment rates nine months after graduation.  For the list of top ten schools look  here .  I especially like the first comment to that story.  This list clearly fails to recognize that most students will not have the GPA and LSAT scores to get admitted to the law schools Above the Law ranks at the top of its list.  Moreover, the list covers only the top 50 schools, leaving about 150 ABA-accredited schools out of the analysis.  See  here . My last post here  discussed how the reported employment numbers could mislead a prospective student.  This new ranking system reflects only the last category of numbers I discussed:  full-time, long-term, bar-required employment within nine months after graduation. I am not the only law school professor frustrated with the coverage these numbers get.  Brian Leiter of the University of Chicago has...