SALTMAN CENTER FOR CONFLICT RESOLUTION
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New Saltman Center administrator to offer specialized negotiation trainings
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Bioethics mediation presentation to be given in Las Vegas and Reno in November
Center Gets High-Powered Advisory Board The Saltman Center for Conflict Resolution has assembled a diverse group of conflict resolution professionals to join an advisory board to help publicize the work of the Center on a national and international level, and provide valuable advice and assistance to the Center’s staff. The board will have its first formal meeting on Saturday, February 3, 2007.
Board members include Richard J. Goldstone, former Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa and Chief Prosecutor of the United Nations Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda; Carrie MenkelMeadow, A.B. Chettle, Jr. Chair in Dispute Resolution at Georgetown University Law Center; Robert Mnookin, Williston Professor of Law and Chair of the Steering Committee
of the Harvard Program on Negotiation; the Honorable Philip M. Pro, Chief Judge of the United States District Court, District of Nevada and student of conflict resolution in eastern Europe; and Andrea Schneider, Professor of Law, International Law, and Alternative Dispute Resolution at Marquette University Law School.
INSIDE THIS ISSUE: “I don’t deserve that
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ticket!” Fall 2006 Schedule of
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Speakers Third place, twice, in
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national contests! SCCR to 3 offer training programs in negotiation Should the Federal Arbitration Act be scrapped?
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Peter Reilly Joins Saltman Center The Saltman Center for Conflict Resolution is very pleased to welcome Peter Reilly as its new Director of Training. He comes to the Boyd School of Law from Washburn School of Law in Topeka, Kansas, where he was Associate Professor of Law and taught negotiations, contract law, and an ADR seminar. Peter spent three years as a Hewlett Fellow in Conflict Resolution and Legal Problem-Solving, and was an Adjunct Law Professor at Georgetown University Law Center. Earlier, he worked as Attorney-Advisor in the Office of General Counsel of the United States Commission on
Peter Reilly, newly-arrived Director of Training for the Saltman Center for Conflict Resolution Civil Rights in Washington, D.C. He clerked for Judge Raya S. Dreben of the State Appeals Court, Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Peter is a graduate of Princeton
University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs (B.A.), Harvard Law School (J.D.), and Georgetown University Law Center (LL.M.). His article, "Teaching Law Students How to Feel: Using Negotiations Training to Increase Emotional Intelligence," is published in the Negotiation Journal. Peter’s expertise is negotiations, something in which most lawyers have no formal training. His goal is to share his expertise with corporate, government, and nonprofit organizations throughout the region. (See article on page 3.)
Visit our website at www.law.unlv.edu/saltman.html
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“I don’t deserve that ticket!” That plea is heard over and over again in UNLV’s Parking Citation Appeals Arbitration program, developed by the Saltman Center for Dispute Resolution. Boyd students trained as arbitrators hear appeals filed by members of the university community who feel they were ticketed unjustly. The student arbitrators must balance the desire of the appellant to have the parking fee returned, the arbitrator’s own experience with parking on campus, the need to be fair, and the requirements of the law—in this
case the parking regulations. This program has been a marvelous experience for the student arbitrators, because it brings them face-to-face with the difficulties of judging. University Vice-President Michael Sauer and Parking Services Manager Tad McDowell approached Saltman Center Associate Director Ray Patterson earlier this year to see if the Center could develop a formal appeals program to deal with the growing number of people who were challenging their university
parking citations. The Center proposed an appeals arbitration program and was fortunate to be able to get Richard Chernick, vice president of JAMS, a national ADR organization, to train interested members of the Saltman Dispute Resolution Society. Boyd arbitrators enjoy their work and have continued to hear cases through the summer. Parking Services says it is delighted with the program. Plans call for new student arbitrators to be trained in the fall.
“This program has been a marvelous experience for the student arbitrators, because it brings them face-to-face with the difficulties of judging.”
Fall 2006 Schedule of Speakers September 15, 2006 12:30 pm, Room 102: Professor Jennifer Brown, Quinnipiac Law School, will speak on “The Promise and Paradox of Restorative Discipline.” Focusing on alleged attorney misconduct, restorative discipline would give more attention than does our current system to the interests and needs of clients who have allegedly been harmed by their attorneys. Such reforms might bring misbehaving lawyers back into the fold, and even help restore the public’s faith in the legal profession more generally. October 6, 2006 12:30 pm, Room 102: Senior Circuit Judge Dorothy W. Nelson, U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, will talk on “Judges’ Views on ADR.” Judge Nelson was an early proponent of ADR, establishing a dispute resolution center at the University of Southern California Law Center in 1967. She is currently the chair of the Western Justice Center Foundation in Pasadena, California.
November 15, 2006 (Las Vegas) 12:30 pm, Room 105: Sponsored jointly by the School of Law and the School of Medicine, Professor Carol B. Liebman, Director of the Mediation Clinic at Columbia University Law School, and Professor Nancy N. Dubler, Director of the Division of Bio ethi cs, Dep ar t me nt of Epidemiology and Population Health, Montefiore Medical Center and Professor of Epidemiology and Population Health at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, will speak on “Bioethics Mediation.” This area of mediation focuses on resolving controversial end-of-life decisions that involve members of the dying patient’s family and/or members of the medical team. Making a geographic and interdisciplinary leap, Professors Liebman and Dubler will also present this topic on November 16 to the legal and medical community in Reno.
Interested students, faculty and community members attend Saltman Center talks by visiting experts.
Ponder this… “The chief enemy of peace is the spirit of unreason itself: an inability to conceive alternatives, an unwillingness to reconsider old prejudices, to part with ideological obsessions, to entertain new ideas or to improve new plans.” —Lewis Mumford, In the Name of Sanity
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Boyd Students Take 3rd in Nat’l Competitions—Twice! Each year, members of the school’s Society of Advocates form themselves into teams, practice with faculty coaches and travel to regional ADR competitions in negotiating, counseling clients, and representing clients in mediation. Boyd sent two teams to each of three regional competitions sponsored by the American Bar Association during the 2005-06 school year. All did well, but two teams distinguished themselves by each taking third place in national
competitions. Jerold Creed and Stacy Perez-Roe took first place in the regional and third place in the national Client Counseling competition finals in Orlando, Florida in April. Rob Henriksen and Kurt Smith placed third in the regionals and, in an unusual final round, were actually in a three-way tie for first place in the Negotiation competition finals in Chicago in March. ABA sponsors reverted to a backup scoring system, which put the Boyd team in third place
nationally. Team coaches were Associate Director Ray Patterson (negotiation and representation in mediation), Director Jean Sternlight and Legal Writing Assistant Professor Rebecca Scharf (client counseling.) All team members worked very hard and put in many hours preparing for their competition. Congratulations to all who participated!
Jerold Creed and Stacy PerezRoe, first place regional and third place national winners in the ABA Client Counseling competition
Scrap the FAA? Experts To Weigh In On Amending 1925 Act Major Arbitration Symposium Planned at Boyd for January ’07 Director Jean Sternlight has lined up an impressive array of the country’s leading scholars of arbitration, who have written widely and often with opposing viewpoints, for a symposium scheduled for January 26, 2007, on “Rethinking the Federal Arbitration Act.” This statute is now over 80 years old but has never been revised in any significant way since its implementation. In addition, much criticism has been made of
the Act in recent years because it is being applied in ways the drafters never foresaw. In the early years of the statute’s existence, it was used solely in commercial cases, but today it is being applied to consumer and employment agreements, form contracts and international disputes. Sternlight notes that the world is a very different place today, and whether the FAA should be amended is an important ques-
tion. All policymakers, practicing arbitrators, judges, and lawyers are encouraged to attend, as well as interested students, faculty and members of the public. For registration information, please see our website. The symposium talks will be published as a future issue of the Nevada Law Journal.
“Much criticism has been made of the Act in recent years because it is being applied in ways the drafters never foresaw.”
Saltman Center To Offer Negotiation Training Peter Reilly, Director of Training at the Saltman Center for Conflict Resolution, is offering training in the field of negotiations at all levels, from beginning to advanced. Peter has trained widely with both public and private organizations—including groups of doctors, lawyers, businesspeople, government officials, and public and nonprofit leaders.
Trainings can last anywhere from one hour to several days, depending on the group or organization’s needs. By combining traditional lectures with “experiential learning” through simulated negotiations, role plays, and group exercises, training participants can learn from Peter as well as from each other. Specializing in developing customized trainings, Peter can
work with an organization to quickly pinpoint the kind of negotiations in which members tend to be involved, as well as the types of barriers currently preventing the achievement of favorable agreements. Specific materials, role plays and exercises can be selected in order to teach and “drill” the competencies and skills most relevant in addressing problems
faced by a particular organization or industry. For rates and additional information, please contact Peter at (702) 895-2675 or peter.reilly@unlv.edu
Visit our website at www.law.unlv.edu/saltman.html
Center Roundup Judge Richard Goldstone, former Justice of the South African Constitutional Court, spoke in October on “International Criminal Courts: Peace versus Justice”...Perry Rogers, tennis star Andre Agassi’s friend and business manager, addressed a well-attended talk on his experiences negotiating an endorsement contract on Andre’s behalf with Nike...Prof. Andrea Schneider (Marquette U Law School) spoke to a packed lecture hall in January on styles of negotiation. Law students, faculty, and community members made up the attentive audience...Prof. Clark Freshman (U of Miami Law) gave a fascinating presentation in November on emotions and how they can affect negotiating ability...Prof. Chris Guthrie, (Vanderbilt U Law School Associate Dean) continued the discussion on the relationship between psychology and law.
Saltman Center for Conflict Resolution
William S. Boyd School of Law 4505 Maryland Parkway Box 451003 Las Vegas, NV 89154-1003
He argued that judges have three sets of ‘blinders’ that make judging quite difficult. A symposium on this topic will be published in the Nevada Law Journal...Director Jean Sternlight and Associate Director Ray Patterson, along with Dean Dick Morgan, did a presentation for the Nevada Board of Regents based on the book “Difficult Conversations” that was designed to improve communication skills among the Regents...Director Sternlight spoke at a symposium at Depaul University College of Law on “ADR and the Rule of Law,” and also gave two presentations at the ABA Dispute Resolution section annual meeting in Atlanta...Associate Director Patterson moderated a heavily attended UNLV presentation on the issue of embryonic stem cell research...He also successfully mediated a serious neighbor-neighbor
dispute in Pahrump involving the slaughter of a cow...The Center has begun planning a major Environmental ADR conference for the fall of 2007...Director Sternlight has also co-authored a text on arbitration for Cambridge University Press.
Professor Sternlight and Professor Reilly work on developing the Saltman Center schedule of speakers for the 2006-2007 academic year.