Alternative Dispute Resolution

Benefit from the nation's most comprehensive ADR curriculum

Increasingly, courts are moving beyond traditional trials and appeals to help clients find satisfactory resolutions to their disagreements. Negotiation, mediation, and other processes are helping all parties to a controversy reach a mutually satisfying outcome. Moritz has one of the finest programs in alternative dispute resolution (ADR), and the program is consistently ranked in the top five nationally each year.

The Moritz College of Law offers an unparalleled opportunity for students to study dispute resolution issues. J.D. students who enroll in a minimum 15 credit hours of ADR courses and complete an externship are awarded a Certificate in Dispute Resolution at graduation.

While in law school, selected J.D. students can edit and write articles for the award-winning Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution (JDR) and work as research assistants for ADR faculty members. The journal, founded in 1985, is the official law journal of the American Bar Association's Section on Dispute Resolution. ADR students and faculty also publish the electronic Mayhew-Hite Report, which brings news from the field to lawyers and educators around the country. During the school year, Moritz hosts several advocacy skills competitions that emphasize mediation and negotiation.

To help fine tune skills, Ohio State allows students to mediate actual disputes as part of one of the nation's longest-running mediation clinics. In the Mediation Clinic, students learn about alternative methods to settling problems. Students study the law and theory of mediation and how to resolve disputes in the classroom and then gain practical experience by serving as mediators in Small Claims Court cases pending in the City of Columbus Municipal Courts or in multiparty disputes in a variety of extrajudicial settings.

Each year, J.D. students can participate in the Lawrence Negotiation Competition. The intra-school negotiation competition is administered by the Moritz Moot Court and Lawyering Skills Program. Students can participate in a range of activities, including a targeted workshop or classes designed to assist students' understanding of theoretical concepts and performance skills; speakers, both academics and practitioners, discuss frameworks and strategies for conducting negotiations; and the competition.

Through the generosity of the family of Stanley Schwartz Jr. '47, the College annually offers a lecture on a dispute resolution topic by distinguished scholars and practitioners. Recent presenters have included such preeminent scholars as Francis McGovern (Duke), James Fishkin (Stanford), Ian Ayres (Yale), Lawrence Susskind (Harvard and MIT), Amy Gutmann (Princeton), Robert Mnookin (Harvard), Judith Resnik (Yale), Craig McEwen (Bowdoin), and Robert A. Baruch Bush (Hofstra) and such distinguished jurists as Harry T. Edwards and Dorothy Nelson.

Faculty selectively participate in public policy studies and projects on matters relating to dispute resolution, which provide opportunities for students to serve as research assistants or program participants. Initiatives have included working with selected Columbus public schools and law firms in the design and delivery of a dispute resolution training program for middle school students.

The Ohio State University Moritz Law Library, one of the nation's largest academic law libraries, houses a preeminent collection of dispute resolution materials.