It’s a Wrap, Seattle

Interested in teaching, learning, or networking with diverse alternative dispute resolution practitioners, educators, and consumers of ADR? Join the ABA Dispute Resolution Section at it’s 18th Annual Spring Conference in New York next April.

Last week, our host city, Seattle, was the perfect backdrop for current and future leaders in the diverse world of ADR  to interact and network; the city  perfectly reflects the innovative and vibrant Pacific Northwest.

Plenaries, committee meetings, the Legal Educators Colloquium, and Symposium on ADR in the Courts joined the Finals of the National Advocacy in Mediation Competition, the awards luncheon, and dozens of practical, provocative and forward-looking conference sessions. The impact of emotions on mediation, ethical issues in family business disputes, collaborative law approaches to elder and probate issues, management of arbitration proceedings, the impact of ADR on sports, mediation in healthcare, and international commercial mediation were just a few of the educational sessions offered. This annual conference is hosted by the section, the largest dispute resolution membership organization in the world.

Congratulations again to the University of Oklahoma College of Law team who won the National Representation In Mediation Competition. This year's award recipients for outstanding contributions to the ADR world also were appropriate recipients indeed:

• The D’Alemberte-Raven Award, the Section’s highest honor, was awarded to David Hoffman, a Fellow of the American College of Civil Trial Mediators. This award recognizes David’s outstanding service in dispute resolution. David is the founding member of the Boston Law Collaborative, where his practice focuses on resolving conflicts in business, family, and employment cases. A sought-after mediation trainer and frequent speaker at dispute resolution events, David also has published three books and scores of articles on the subject of dispute resolution. He teaches the mediation course at Harvard Law School, where he is the John H.Watson, Jr. Lecturer on Law. Past awardees include Governor Bill Richardson (2014), Senator George J. Mitchell (2013), and Linda Singer and Michael Lewis (2012).
• The Individual Lawyer as Problem Solver Award recognizes individuals and organizations that use their problem-solving skills to forge creative solutions. The award is given to an individual member of the legal profession and/or institution who has exhibited extraordinary skill in either promoting the concept of the lawyer as problem-solver or resolving individual, institutional, community, state, national, or international problems. Award recipients are acknowledged for their use or promotion of collaboration, negotiation, mediation, counseling, decision-making, and problem-solving skills to help parties resolve a problem in a creative and novel way. This year’s Individual and Institutional awardees are Ron Ousky and the Resource Center for Separating and Divorcing Families, respectively.
• Professor Jean Sternlight is the recipient of the Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work. This award honors individuals whose scholarship has significantly contributed to the dispute resolution field. Professor Sternlight is the Michael and Sonja Saltman Professor of Law at the University of Nevada Las Vegas William S. Boyd School of Law, where she also directs the Saltman Center for Conflict Resolution. Professor Jean Sternlight has been a distinguished leader in the field of ADR for two decades. She is nationally and internationally recognized for her scholarship and law reform activities in the field of dispute resolution.  To learn more about these awards and recipients, please visit the ABA Dispute Resolution Section website at http://www.americanbar.org/groups/dispute_resolution.html

I encourage you to join the section and join us in New York next year. And for those who can’t make it, look for livestreaming of certain events, which was unveiled for the first time this year.