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Grieving over Settlement: The Impact of Loss in Mediation

  • Marketing Resolution PO box 632 Marsing, Idaho United States (map)

Thursday, September 28th

8 a.m PST | 11 a.m EST

Register Here

Our special guest this week, Dwight Golann, Research Professor, University of California Law - San Francisco and Suffolk University Law School - Boston, will Present on:


Grieving over Settlement: The Impact of Loss in Mediation

The mediation movement often suggests that a key goal of the process is to facilitate parties’ search for interest-based solutions that create value. I think this advice is misguided: while creative terms can be very helpful in reaching agreement, most settlements involve one and often both sides feeling that they are losing.

Feelings of loss, as Kahneman and Tversky demonstrated, are some of the strongest forces that influence human decision-making. Freud and other psychologists have observed that people process feelings of loss in what amounts to a kind of internal negotiation in their minds between wish and reality.

In legal cases, disputants may conduct the same internal negotiation at the same time as the negotiation happening between the parties. People also may use legal cases to avoid feeling loss, which results in what I call “delayed loss reaction”: strong feelings that erupt suddenly as parties confront difficult settlement decisions. People also sometimes refuse to settle because it means ending case that has emotional significance for them. This session will explore how feelings of loss influence disputants’ bargaining decisions, and how mediators can respond to them..

Join us for this unique opportunity!

Offered by Will Work For Food and moderated by Jeff Kichaven (www.JeffKichaven.com ) and Jean Lawler (www.LawlerADR.com)

This worldwide conversation will be like nothing else.  Join in!  Share, learn, have fun, and raise money for food banks.

Prof. Golann invites you to support Greater Boston Food Bank

Register Here

About DWIGHT GOLANN

 

Dwight Golann has been a mediator and teacher of dispute resolution for more than twenty-five years. He is a Research Professor at Suffolk University Law School and has led trainings for federal and state courts, the Federal Judicial Center, the European Union, and ADR organizations on five continents. He was formerly Director of Training for J.A.M.S.

Professor Golann has resolved hundreds of legal disputes in a wide variety of subject areas and is the author of the American Bar Association’s leading books on commercial mediation, Mediating Legal Disputes, and mediation advocacy, Sharing a Mediator’s Powers, as well as law school texts.

Professor Golann was formerly a litigator in private practice. He served as Chief of the Trial Division of the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office, where he directed all litigation filed against state officials and agencies and tried and argued cases at every level of the American court system.

He is the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award of the American College of Civil Mediators, is an Honorary Member of the International Academy of Mediators and received the American Bar Association’s 2021 Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Dispute Resolution. He is a graduate of Amherst College and Harvard Law School.

 

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September 21

Overcoming Avoidance of Diversity Changes in Dispute Resolution: Tools for Change

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October 5

What I've Always Wanted To Say To Mediators