Mediation On-Line A Newsletter from ADR Resources http://adrr.com/adr9/038.htm Volume 4, No. 2. From: Ethesis@aol.com (Ethesis) To: SMarsh@adrr.com Subscribe

Greetings:

It has been a busy time, but I hope that everyone survived the holiday season with their good will and sanity intact.  I am now the technology chair for the Conflict Management Division of the Academy of Management.  I suspect that they will overwhelm the ABA in a fashion similar to the way the ABA has affected the role of SPIDR, et al. (Yes, I am still very positive on the SPIDR, etc. merger, and I expect the combined organization to bounce back).

The Recommended Book of the Month:

I'm going to recommend two books, for different reasons.

First, a book almost impossible to find using search engines (blame it on WestLaw) is Jerome Levy's book on mediation. An excellent book and a stellar part of West's Texas Practice series.  The book is now also impossible to buy without buying a complete set of about twenty other books.

Second, a book on consulting.  I recommend this book for three reasons.  (a) the real model for the delivery of dispute resolution services (beyond lining up to do court-annexed mediation) is consulting.  I need to do an essay explaining the background for that statement, but it is true.  (b) the big consulting firms have realized this (the "big six" have been running DR training retreats with hundreds of participants for more than a year).  (c) "small" consulting groups have started to offer DR services (often because clients are requesting them) -- in fact, I get students in classes I teach who are consultants looking for training so they can provide services requested by existing clients.

The book I am recommending is Consulting For Dummies. There are many good books on the topic, and I winced at recommending this particular one (in fact, at http://adrr.com/pub/consulting.htm I list four very good books), but if you are interested in the general concepts it is a great place to start.  

Interesting new Mediation & ADR web sites

I remain interested in getting referrals to new or important ADR sites.  Please send me the url rather than embedded links so that I can look at the address before having to visit it.  Thanks.

• http://info.med.yale.edu/caim/manual/ is a link to a style manual for professional web sites.  I strongly recommend a visit to anyone thinking about designing a web page.
• Just found http://conflictresolver.com.  Not a bad place for an evolving website, but it still has lots of blank pages and broken links.
• Also found a great essay -- really a checklist that really hits the nail on the head -- on  "Choosing a Conflict Resolution Program" at http://conflictresolver.com/choosegrad.html.  You owe it to yourself to visit this site and read the essay.
• An interesting article on probate mediation can be found at http://courtlink.utcourts.gov/mediation/adr_prob.htm.
• Five different paths to finding employment teaching conflict management and dispute resolution are discussed at http://adrr.com/adr9/038a.htm.  There is also a collection of recommended books to pick up through interlibrary loan.
• I am unsure of the site http://www.positiongeek.com/.
• There is a site on "scholastic mediation" at http://www.mediacioneducativa.com.ar/english.  I must say that they are trying very, very hard to put together a comprehensive site.  They are also looking for feedback, improvements and suggestions.
• Shambhala Institute is at www.shambhalainstitute.org and they will be putting on a seminar on conflict resolution this coming June 9-16 in Halifax.  I like Stan Rodgers music as much as anyone, but Halifax is an interesting place to pick to host a seminar.
• http://onlineresolution.com/ is a very impressive site -- I like the graphics and the technology.  If you've heard people talk about online mediation, this and Squaretrade are the two places to look to see what it really is.  I wish more sites looked like this one.
• I enjoyed the Harvard Law School links collection for ADR.  It can be found at http://www.law.harvard.edu/Academic_Affairs/Clinical_Program/hmp/othersit.html.
• http://www.rkp.de/mediation/ is an alternate look I was considering for my site.  I had forgotten about it until someone called it to my attention.  Yes, it is prettier than the current site, but I'm not sure it is as useful.  I am open to comments and suggestions on my current site and will be using the .de design at another location for a different purpose.
• I also visited Archie Zaranski's site.  Any list of "A-Z" needs to have this site for the "Z" and a good list could use this site as well.  It is an interesting site.  http://carmen.murdoch.edu.au/~zariski/ is the link.
• A portfolio of custom web sites can be found at www.resourceful.net/portfolio/index.cfm.
• I had the chance to visit www.kgeorgioulawfirm.com.cy and it is a delightful web site.  It is in Cypress, but the site is completely in English (not Greek, Turkish or Arabic) and has a sharp, professional look.  Every so often I see a site that causes me to think that I need to redesign mine, and this was one.  I'd skip the splash page, but it works for him, and the rest of the site is stellar as far as presentation goes.
• An excellent simple HR website -- and proof of mediation's deep penetration into that field, can be found at http://www.wsu.edu/~hres/.  A career in HR is one of the direct career paths for those with undergraduate training in dispute resolution and HR professionals are the natural source of continuing education graduate students for most dispute resolution master's programs.
• For HR mediators, a free download of an interesting book is available at http://www.cnr.berkeley.edu/ucce50/ag-labor/7labor/001.htm.  Worth a visit. They are looking for feedback and comments, so this is your chance to make an impact (and perhaps get a copy of the print version of the book).  It includes chapters on power and abuse of authority, conflict management, interpersonal relations and negotiation strategies.
• http://www.culma.wayne.edu/CMHER/Resources/Opportunities.html is a link to active grants and funding opportunities.  A must visit for anyone running a program.

Essay/Comment/Employment notes

Five different paths to finding employment teaching conflict management and dispute resolution are discussed at http://adrr.com/adr9/038a.htm.  I have also invited graduates from Nova and ICAR to provide essays on their employment perspectives and experiences.  As soon as they finish their essays, I will note them in the next newsletter.

Educational Programs:

The second annual legal educator's colloquium is being held April 28, 2001 in Washington, D.C.  It will be part of the ABA's Dispute Resolution Annual meeting and will be inviting teachers from business and medical schools to attend as well as the usual behavioral and social sciences types and the formal graduate and undergraduate dispute resolution program directors.  If you want to provide themes, suggest presenters or find out more, contact barkai@hawaii.edu or jcoben@gw.hamline.edu.  (yes, jcoben is Jim Coben at Hamline, 651-523-2137 if you want to give him a call).

News and Book Reviews/Books/Periodicals

Jerome Levy wrote a book on dispute resolution with a focus on mediation.  It is an excellent book, but did not sell well until his publisher put the book on the web just like the Yale web site style guide is completely on the web at http://info.med.yale.edu/caim/manual/ -- which now sells much, much better than it did pre-posting on the web.  When that change happened, sales of the book went up by a factor of ten or more (and, importantly, royalty payments went up dramatically as well, from a few hundred dollars a quarter to several thousand).  I suspect that if you could find the book via a search engine it would sell even more.  The Westlaw site is inherently hostile to search engines and they've done nothing to encourage or create links (not even a spider index like I have).  They do have competitors who have done much better jobs so that searches are not in vain, they just find pages for ordering competitor's works.  The mind boggles at what might happen to sales of his book if it becomes easy to find.  The coup de grace on the book is that after sales took off by a factor of ten, Westlaw decided to quit offering the book by itself and now requires buyers to buy it as a part of the Texas Practice series.  Our office just did that, but I'm not sure I'd recommend buying thousands of dollars of books just to get that one.

I am slowly reworking my on-line listing of books.  For a view at the new look, visit http://adrr.com/pub/ -- you can tell the new sections from the old ones because the new ones have sharply different graphic approaches and format looks.

The ABA has released a new book, Directory of Law School Dispute Resolution Courses and Programs, 2000 Edition. With 830 courses and programs at 182 law schools, the information has moved from news to routine.

Current Issues

The concept of consolidating all the posting boards in the ADR field to a central location is a growing issue and is being discussed, especially in light of the number of moribund boards out there.  Such a project would be in addition to, not as a replacement for, the current 25+ listserves.  http://adrr.com/adr0/links1.htm#Listserv.  I would personally prefer to see a UBB style board used -- I've seen them succeed where other formats bog down.  The biggest problem with a UBB-style board is that it does not offer many of the tools some of the other boards offer.  The biggest advantage is that it works so much better.  For examples of UBB-style boards that work, try http://adrr.com/law2/  (14,000 hits a week) or http://swordforum.com/community/ -- which is replacing http://swordforum.com/discussions/.  I should note that almost the entire game industry is supported by UBB-style boards with incredible amounts of traffic.

Submissions to adrr.com

As always, I am interested in any submissions or articles anyone would like to have posted on the web -- and I am glad to be able to point them out in this newsletter.  I prefer to post material as you have written it, with no editorial changes by myself.

With my best regards, I remain,

Sincerely yours,

Stephen Marsh
http://adrr.com/adr9/038.htm
Additional material is included in the on-line version.
If you are curious where the term/name Ethesis comes
from, visit http://adrr.com/living/ethesis.htm

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