ADR

It appears my partner and I stumbled into a degree of success in the ADR (Alternative Dispute Resolution) contest in which we participated last Sunday. As I mentioned last week, I was a little less than excited by this competition, primarily because it seemed to require "formal business attire," a.k.a. a uniform.
But after ranting against the monkey suit, I gave into the inevitable and, $252 later (thanks to a big sale at Filene's Basement), I had the full uniform (socks and shoes included). And yesterday, we got the call saying, "Congratulations, you made the ADR Board." Yay!

The competition was actually pretty fun. Briefly, it worked like this: Each team of two got a fact pattern describing a dispute between a fictional collegiate athletic association and one of its member schools accused of rule violations. In addition, each team got some "confidential information" about what their client wanted out of the negotiation. The actual contest was a 20-minute negotiation session in which the two teams came together to see if they could reach an agreement. It turned out the confidential info on both sides gave us plenty of room for meeting in the middle, which we quickly did.

Like I said, it was fun, and it's always nice to get positive feedback for the things you do. Still, I feel a little silly about making the board; I mean, after listening to one of its reps lecture me about clothes for 20 minutes, I was convinced ADR was the last thing in law school for me. What's more, I don't really know what role ADR plays in the legal world or what it means to be "on the board." (Can anyone fill me in?) Yet, the idea of ADR seems like a good one; it's supposed to be a friendly thing, as opposed to the adversarial nature of a court proceeding. How can that be bad? I guess we'll see...

Posted October 7, 2003 06:16 AM | law school