Len Riskin and Nancy Welsh recently posted a version of their article, “Is that All There is?  The ‘Problem’ in Court-Oriented Mediation.”  I gather from the taglines that it will be published in the George Mason Law Review later this year, and I look forward to seeing the final version.

The question Len and Nancy ask is whether the current system of court-affiliated mediation systems tailor their approaches to non-family disputes in ways that meet parties’ interests beyond those captured by litigation risk assessments.  They conclude that many mediation systems fail to do so, and they propose a set of initiates aimed at encouraging the “customization” of mediation.

Using the case described in Barry Werth’s work Damages: One Family’s Legal Struggles in the World of Medicine, Len and Nancy describe what alternatives might look like, and they paint a compelling picture.  Like most law review articles, this one is not as short as a casual reader would surely prefer.  But it’s a great read nonetheless.

Michael Moffitt