Mediation & Negotiation

Robert Zoellick, the U.S. diplomat who helped negotiate the end of the Cold War, says Vladimir Putin’s claims about Ukraine are part of a disinformation campaign.

Students in an advanced negotiation course taught by Professor Rachel Viscomi ’01 and clinical instructor Sara del Nido Budish ’13 used insights from multiparty negotiation to analyze the potential passage of legislation aimed at helping people suffering from ALS — and to better understand how to work as a team.

Harvard Law negotiation expert Rachel Viscomi ’01 analyzes the playing field as the U.S. and its allies confront Russian troop buildup on Ukraine’s borders.

The Center on the Legal Profession convenes experts from public and private sectors for a day-long symposium on crisis lawyering.

As special master of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, or VCF, Rupa Bhattacharyya ’95 is working to ensure that fair compensation goes to the victims of the attacks.

With the start of the academic year, a look at nine faculty who have joined Harvard Law School, been promoted, or taken on new roles in 2021.

Rachel A. Viscomi ’01 has been appointed clinical professor of law at Harvard Law School. Viscomi, who was appointed director of the Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program (HNMCP) in 2018, was most recently an assistant clinical professor of law.

Sheila Heen ’93, negotiation expert and trainer, has been appointed professor of practice at Harvard Law School, effective July 1, 2021. She has been a lecturer on law at HLS since 1995.

The Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program and the American Bar Association have jointly released a report on best practices for eviction diversion.

Brooke Davies ’21 and Daniel Oyolu ’21 have been awarded the 2021 Andrew L. Kaufman Pro Bono Service Award.

Articles by Harvard Law Professor Guhan Subramanian, Visiting Professor Michal Barzuza and several HLS alumni were named the Top  Corporate and Securities Articles of 2020.

Last year, Harvard Law Professor Howell Jackson and students in his FinTech class worked with a national nonprofit to help the United Parcel Service create an emergency savings program for 90,000 of its nonunion workers.

Even if there was no COVID-19, online courts would still be the wave of the future: This idea was the starting point for a recent webinar, “Online Courts: Perspectives from the Bench and the Bar,” a half-day event convened by the Harvard Law School Center on the Legal Profession.

HLS Lecturer Peter Carfagna ’79 discusses Major League Baseball’s return to play during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Singer seeks to help lawyers and the general public make reasoned arguments, promote civil discourse, and consider alternative perspectives.

Deftly adapting to a shift in both venue and format, and applying skills from their J-Term negotiation workshop, Harvard Law 1L students Adira E. Levine, Noopur Sen, and Adam J. Toobin were able to negotiate their way to victory in The Negotiation Challenge—an international contest drawing competitors from around the world.

The Harvard Gazette sat down with Sharon Block and Benjamin Sachs of Harvard's Labor and Worklife Program to talk about their report "Clean Slate for Worker Power: Building a Just Democracy and Economy," and about what they envision for the future of labor law in the United States.

Four of the 26 current and former members of the U.S. armed forces in this year’s entering class at Harvard Law School share their experiences in the military and at HLS.

With the advent of sweeping disaster comes the complicated question of how properly to compensate victims. The Program on Negotiation at HLS convenes an expert panel on dispute resolution in the wake of mass disasters.

In September, two Harvard Law School clinics and their community partner organizations were recognized by the Boston Bar Association for their collaborative efforts to fight housing displacement in Boston.

1L January Experiential Term courses focus on skills-building, collaboration and self-reflection

Victor Madrigal-Borloz, the United Nations Independent Expert for the protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, will join HLS' Human Rights Program as a senior visiting researcher in July.

Drawing from a wide variety of prosecutorial experiences, Assistant U.S. Attorney Varghese shared insights and anecdotes with the Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program's Negotiation Workshop about what it is like to negotiate in the real world.

A team of students from Harvard Law School’s World Trade Organization won the North American Round of the John H. Jackson Moot Court Competition. The competition took place in Washington D.C., on April 10 to 14.

Professor of Practice Naz Modirzadeh ’02, founding director of the Harvard Law School Program on International Law and Armed Conflict, spoke before the United Nations Security Council in New York City on April 1 on safeguarding humanitarian assistance in counterterrorism contexts.

These are trying times for the World Trade Organization, Deputy Director-General Alan Wolff admitted when he spoke at Harvard Law School on March 12. Yet in his speech he offered reason for optimism.

A panel discussion at HLS brought together four faculty members to share their moments of reckoning, when they had to re-examine some of their most closely held ideas.

The 2019 Harvard Negotiation Law Review symposium, “Redressing Harm Through Restorative Justice,” focused on the challenges of addressing power imbalances and trauma through implementation of restorative practices within communities.

After serving as New York’s solicitor general and working in private law practice, Preeta D. Bansal ’89 played a major role in the Obama administration’s first term as general counsel for the Office of Management and Budget. In 2015, she co-founded the Social Emergence Corporation to explore ways to encourage communication and community. She is a senior adviser to the MIT Media Lab’s Social Machines Laboratory.

Christine Desan, the Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, organized the conference, “Money as a Democratic Medium,” a two-day event that challenged its participants to re-examine the history of money in America, and to redefine its future.

At a recent Harvard Law School Library Book Talk, Catharine A. MacKinnon, a pioneer of legal theory and practice and an activist for women’s rights, discussed her latest book "Butterfly Politics," in which she argues that seemingly minor interventions in the legal realm can have a butterfly effect that generates major social and cultural transformations.

A student delegation from the Harvard Association for Law and Business (HALB) visited business, legal, and government leaders in London and Brussels, Belgium, in late August, as part of HALB’s second-annual International Trek.

Former Attorney General of the United States Loretta Lynch ’84, the first African-American woman attorney general, shares her HLS experience and discusses her career as the country’s chief law enforcement officer. Lynch will be one of hundreds of Harvard Law alumnae gathered on campus on Sept 14-15 to commemorate Celebration 65. 

On Google’s main campus in Mountain View, Calif., Harvard Law School's Center on the Legal Profession convened more than 80 innovation leaders from around the world—half from law firms and half from in-house legal departments—in June, for a series of in-depth workshops around how their organizations operationalize innovation.

In July, Harvard’s Labor and Worklife Program began an ambitious effort to fix a broken system of labor laws. The program, with the overall title “Rebalancing Economic and Political Power: A Clean Slate for the Future of Labor Law,” began with a daylong seminar at Wasserstein Hall last month.

Rachel A. Viscomi ’01 has been appointed assistant clinical professor of law at Harvard Law School and named director of the Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program. She was formerly a lecturer on law at HLS and the acting director of HNMCP.

Frank E.A. Sander ’52, a pioneer in the field of alternative dispute resolution and a longtime Harvard Law professor, died Feb. 25, 2018. He was 90.

Harvard Law School is pleased to announce that the Fisher family has made a generous $4 million gift to establish the Roger D. Fisher Fellowship Fund at HLS, that will support research and teaching fellowships in negotiation and conflict resolution.

Professor of Practice Alex Whiting chose a personal story for his Last Lecture to the class of 2018, one about the development of, and lessons learned from, an unexpected relationship.

A team of Harvard Law students won the North American regional competition at the European Law Students Association (ELSA) Moot Court Competition on WTO Law. The team will advance to the final round at the WTO Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland later this spring.

Kicking of the Harvard Association for Law & Business' seventh annual symposium on Feb. 26, a panel of top-level executives in the financial world explored the possibilities of crossing over from a legal to a financial career.

Professor Guhan Subramanian ’98 will be the new chair of the Program on Negotiation (PON) at Harvard Law School. Subramanian holds appointments at both Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School. As chair of PON, he will succeed Professor Robert H. Mnookin `68.

Frank E.A. Sander ’52, a longtime Harvard Law School professor and a pioneer in the field of Alternative Dispute Resolution, has died. He was 90.

The Harvard Law School trial team of Rahul Garabadu ’19 and Marilyn Robb ’18 won first place at the Northeast Regional Qualifiers of the National Trial Competition, sponsored annually by the American College of Trial Lawyers and the Texas Young Lawyers Association.

The Harvard Association for Law and Business (HALB) hosted Kim Koopersmith, chairperson of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, and Jami Wintz McKeon, chair of Morgan Lewis & Bockius, as a feature event in HALB’s inaugural Women's Leadership Speaker Series.

In early December, the Harvard Law School Center on the Legal Profession (CLP) hosted two major events in India to celebrate the publication of 'The Indian Legal Profession in the Age of Globalization: The Rise of the Corporate Legal Sector and its Impact on Lawyers and Society.'

Harvard Law professor Jack Goldsmith shares his perspective on American institutions and the Trump presidency in a recent interview with Weekly Standard editor-at-large Bill Kristol.