John Lande
Articles and Video:Collaborative Law (CL) is an innovative dispute resolution process that offers significant benefits but also poses significant non-obvious risks. This Article provides a systematic analysis of these possible risks as identified in books written by CL experts, CL practice group websites, social science research, and bar association ethics opinions. The Revolution in Family Law Dispute Resolution In the past fifty years, the revolution in American family law led to a revolution in family law dispute resolution. Virtually every aspect of divorce law has been transformed since the Mad Men era, including grounds for divorce, characterization of marital property, child custody presumptions, and alimony and child support rules. Marriage is not assumed to be a lifelong commitment. Fault generally is not legally relevant. Gender equality is a fundamental principle. How Neutrals Can Provide Early Case Management of Construction Disputes This article describes how neutrals can provide early case management and resolution services to help parties in construction disputes resolve them more efficiently. An Empirical Analysis of Collaborative Practice This article summarizes empirical research about Collaborative Practice, the Collaborative movement, its interaction with other parts of the dispute resolution field, and its impact on the field. Relationships Drive Support For Mediation Business lawyers and executives widely support mediation. According to a recent study, however, that support is not based on dissatisfaction with courts or perceived advantages of mediation, like lower costs. In fact, business lawyers’ and executives’ support for mediation is related to perceptions about the effects of mediation on business and organizational relationships. 1 Comment Helping Lawyers Help Clients Make Good Decisions About Dispute Resolution Lawyers face a great challenge in advising clients about what dispute resolution (DR) process to use. There are many DR processes and people are developing new variations all the time. The choice of process can have a huge impact on the parties. Thus it is important for lawyers to give clients good advice about the choice of process, though this is easier said than done. The Uniform Collaborative Law Act’s Contribution to Informed Client Decision Making in Choosing a Dispute Resolution Process This Article describes how lawyers can implement the requirements of the Uniform Collaborative Law Act to obtain clients’ informed consent. The Act requires lawyers to obtain clients’ informed consent before undertaking a Collaborative representation but does not specify the information that lawyers must discuss with prospective Collaborative parties. The Promise and Perils of Collaborative Law Getting people to use an interest-based approach in negotiation has been a difficult problem. Experts have provided helpful suggestions for 'changing the game,' though these ideas are usually limited to case-by-case efforts within a culture of adversarial negotiation. Collaborative law (CL) is an important innovation that establishes a general norm of interest-based negotiation and intentionally develops a new legal culture. CL reverses the traditional presumption that negotiators will use adversarial negotiation. Common Misconceptions About Cooperative Legal Practice Pauline Tesler, a prominent leader of the Collaborative Practice movement, complained about critics using a “doubting game” to unfairly criticize Collaborative Practice. From John Lande Mediate.com serves an invaluable function of commissioning and collecting materials of great practical value to dispute resolution practitioners, teachers, students, and the public. The materials are easily accessible and cover the full range of the field. The field owes a great debt to its founders and editors of this fantastic resource. Lessons for Collaborative Lawyers and Other Dispute Resolution Professionals from Colorado Bar Association Ethics Opinion 115 In February 2007, a Colorado Bar Association ethics opinion found that four-way Collaborative Law agreements between lawyers and clients constitute per se violations of ethical rules prohibiting conflict of interest, but that similar Cooperative Law agreements do not violate the ethical rules. Although the opinion’s reasoning and conclusion are problematic, it does highlight the importance of ethical issues in Collaborative Law. It also gives recognition to Cooperative Law, which is similar to Collaborative Law, but does not involve a disqualification agreement. (The disqualification agreement precludes the parties from retaining their Collaborative Lawyers if they decide to litigate.) Adding Cooperative Law to the roster of commonly-available ADR processes has the potential to create great benefits for parties, practitioners, the dispute resolution field, and society. Collaborative and Cooperative Law — Promise and Perils Collaborative law (CL) is an important innovation that establishes a general norm of interest-based negotiation and intentionally develops a new legal culture. CL reverses the traditional presumption that negotiators will use adversarial negotiation. CL parties and lawyers sign a participation agreement establishing the rules for the process. Under these agreements, lawyers and parties (negotiators) focus exclusively on negotiation, disclosing all relevant information and using an interest-based approach. Negotiators work primarily in four-way meetings in which everyone is expected to participate actively. Respecting Rival Mediation Philosophies Arguments over terminology are not just academic exercises. These debates shape actual practices of mediators regarding what it means to be a good practitioner, referring to shared meanings and norms within one's practice community. For example, if the facilitative-evaluative distinction described below gains currency, mediation shoppers may base their selection of mediators on perceptions along this dimension.  |
John Lande is the Isidor Loeb Professor at the University of Missouri School of Law and former director of its LLM Program in Dispute Resolution. He received his J.D. from Hastings College of Law and Ph.D in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He began mediating professionally in 1982 in California. He was a fellow at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School and the Director of the Mediation Program at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law School. His work focuses on various aspects of dispute systems design, including publications analyzing how lawyering and mediation practices transform each other, business lawyers’ and executives’ opinions about litigation and ADR, designing court-connected mediation programs, improving the quality of mediation practice, the “vanishing trial,” and planned early negotiation. The International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution gave him its award for best professional article for Principles for Policymaking about Collaborative Law and Other ADR Processes, 22 Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution 619 (2007). The ABA recently published his book, Lawyering with Planned Early Negotiation: How You Can Get Good Results for Clients and Make Money. His website, where you can download his publications, is 
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