The 2024 CLEA/AALS Externship Achievement Award

On behalf of the AALS Clinical Section’s Externships Subcommittee and the CLEA Externships Committee, it is an honor to announce that Carrie Kaas of Quinnipiac University School of Law will receive the 2024 Externships Achievement Award.   

  

The Externships Achievement Award honors outstanding contributions to externship pedagogy and the externship community, including (1) commitment to teaching and supporting law students in their transition to practice (2) contributions to the design and implementation of effective externship programs; (3) service to the externship community specifically and to the development and growth of experiential legal education generally; and (4) a record of written scholarship, teaching resources, or other enduring public works of value to the externship community and experiential legal education.  

  

Carrie’s teaching and service exemplifies each of these principles.  As Director of Externships, and later, Associate Dean of Experiential Education, Carrie has developed and supervised a robust externship program totaling more than 300 potential externship sites at Quinnipiac University School of Law.  She is tremendously dedicated to her students and has served as a mentor and guide to many.  In recognition of her externship teaching, students voted her Professor of the Year and the Connecticut Bar Association honored her with the Tapping Reeve Legal Educator Award in 2023.   

  

Quotes from alums in support of Carrie’s nomination reflect her impact on the students at QUSL:  

  • “Carrie Kaas is one of those rare individuals who inspires students with compassion, joy, and a firm hand. My experience with her as a guide through two externships while at QUSL was one of the highlights of my law school journey.” 

  • “Carrie has a deep commitment to humanizing the field of law: of seeing the people behind the cases and training a future cadre of lawyers who are just as focused on healing as they are on winning.” 

In the experiential legal education community, Carrie has been a principal leader and voice of the national externship community.  Among numerous other contributions, she has served as President and Board Member of CLEA, and co-chair of several CLEA committees. In 2007, she was a contributing author and editor for Best Practices for Legal Education, written by Roy Stuckey and published by CLEA. In 2015, with Deborah Maranville, Lisa Radtke Bliss, and Antoinette Sedillo Lopez, Carrie continued this work as a coeditor of Building on Best Practices and also co-authored a chapter on externship education in that volume.  

  

We look forward to honoring Carrie Kaas at lunch on Friday, October 18 at the Externships 12 Conference, hosted by the New England Consortium on Externships, in Boston!   

 

AALS-CLEA Externship Achievement Awards Selection Committee  

Megan Bess (UIC) 

Laurie Hauber (Oregon) 

D’lorah Hughes (Kentucky) 

June Tai (Iowa) 

 

$540,000 Grant from the Connecticut Department of Housing

The Quinnipiac University School of Law (QUSL) Homelessness Mitigation Mediation Program (HMMP) just received a $540,000 grant from the Connecticut State Department of Housing. The award will support HMMP’s work to assist the department in serving individuals applying for the UniteCT Eviction Prevention Fund Program. 

The grant enables QUSL to continue offering landlord-tenant mediation services to clients deemed eligible for HMMP by the Department of Housing. The purpose is to help as many clients as possible before they attend any formal court proceedings. This pre-court mediation process is designed to lower any potential anxiety for the clients and help the Connecticut Judicial Branch with its case management.

“Quinnipiac University School of Law’s partnership with the Department of Housing began as a six-month pilot in February 2021, and since this time, it has continued to help individuals facing eviction to work through those issues and remain in their homes,” said Dean Jennifer Gerarda Brown. “This two-year extension is truly exciting. It allows us to continue our focus on providing thoughtful and empathetic mediation services to some of our most vulnerable fellow citizens facing housing instability. To date we have assisted over 1,350 families and individuals navigate their housing situation and options,” Brown added. “We have also focused on our students, providing them with opportunities to participate in a mediation clinic that demonstrates to them the incredible impact they can have on their communities.”

Quinnipiac University School of Law Welcomes the Integrative Law Movement!

The Quinnipiac University Project for Integrative Law in Legal Education celebrated its official launch December 1, 2022, with students in the Integrative Law Approach to Negotiation course. This project is directed by Center Co-Director Carolyn Kaas, along with Senior Fellows Susan Swaim Daicoff and J. Kim Wright. Stay up to date on what is going on with our projects at The Project for Integrative Law in Legal Education.

What is Integrative Law, exactly? “Integrative law is like the soil, from which many new models of legal practice are emerging,” says J. Kim Wright, one of the central figures in the Integrative Law Movement. The values in this 'soil' are different from the conventional legal values (safety, certainty, emotional detachment, etc.) Integrative Law values are more focused on caring, listening, compassion, dignity, inclusivity, being relational, happiness, wellbeing, and love." How integrative law can benefit your practice and your clients.  

Statewide Eviction Prevention Fund To Use Center Mediators

“On January 25, 2023, Governor Ned Lamont and Housing Commissioner Seila Mosquera-Bruno announced that the Department of Housing is launching a new fund to assist renters who are on the verge of being evicted from their homes due to owing past due rent. Utilizing $12.5 million in funding from UniteCT and the Rent Bank, the Eviction Prevention Fund will provide households with up to $5,000 to pay off past due rent with their current landlord. To apply, tenants must call UniteCT…and be screened for eligibility. Eligible applicants will receive direct assistance from a local UniteCT Resource Center, where they will complete the application. If a tenant requires, but does not have legal representation, access to mediators at Quinnipiac University’s Center on Dispute Resolution will be provided.”

The Center on Dispute Resolution launched a Homelessness Mitigation Mediation Program in February 2021, with funding from the CT Dept. of Housing In January 2022, DOH extended the Center’s contract to provide statewide mediation services under the renamed Homeless Prevention Program (HPP). Brendan Holt, a Quinnipiac law professor and Mediation Clinic director is the program’s Executive Director. HPP mediation staff also include Associate Director L'Enchantel "Berta" Holmes, former eviction and foreclosure prevention program manager at Community Mediation Inc. in New Haven and Hamden; and Senior Mediation Fellow, Diana Lamb. Attorney Lamb joined the staff soon after her graduation from QUSL in 2021 with concentrations in Civil Advocacy & Dispute Resolution and Family Law.

Homelessness Mitigation Mediation Project

The School of Law’s Center on Dispute Resolution launched a Homelessness Mitigation Mediation Program (HMMP) in February 2021. In January 2022 HMMP’s contract to provide statewide mediation services under the Connecticut Department of Housing’s “UniteCT” program was renewed until September 2022.

Brendan Holt, an adjunct law professor and director of the Mediation Clinic at Quinnipiac, is the program’s Executive Director. “The Department of Housing was looking for landlord/tenant mediation expertise in the context of COVID-related homelessness relief,” Holt said. “The goal was and still is to both help tenants maintain their housing stability and landlords gain back some of the funds lost through COVID-related nonpayment of rent to keep them viable and keep their properties running. We want to help these folks come to some potential arrangement that works for both sides while increasing housing stability. “Mediation humanizes the process,” Holt added. “Sometimes, creative solutions can come up when you bring both sides to the table. It’s a pressing need. We want to level the playing field and make sure everyone is heard.” “The idea also is to make this a helpful academic endeavor for the clinic and the students who are taking it,” Holt said. “The goal has been to have students either co-mediate or be involved in observing mediations, so it adds to their education and the mediation varieties we hope to expose them to as future lawyers.”

The HMMP staff also includes Associate Director Berta Holmes, who for many years was the eviction and foreclosure prevention program manager and housing mediation trainer at Community Mediation Inc. in New Haven and Hamden. Program staff also includes Senior Mediation Fellow, Diana Lamb. Lamb joined the project soon after her graduation from QUSL in 2021 with a concentration in Civil Advocacy and Dispute Resolution and Family Law. At graduation, she received the Judge F. Owen Eagan Annual Book Award for graduating students demonstrating the most promise in the field of Dispute Resolution.

In Diana's role, she is responsible for direct communication with mediation-referred clients, helping them with traditional mediation sessions as well as providing information and facilitating possible options to stabilize their housing situations. Diana is also involved in the coordination of communication with and between the Department of Housing staff and its contracted partners as well as the programmatic data collection and analysis. The program also has a bilingual Mediation Services Coordinator who serves as a mediator when needed.

The HMMP is now a partnership involving the Center on Dispute Resolution and the law school's Clinical Legal Education Program.

Introducing Berta Holmes

Before becoming Associate Director of the Homelessness Mitigation Mediation Project (HMMP) L'Enchantel "Berta" Holmes worked for Community Mediation, Inc., for 18 years from 1997-2015, during which time she mediated over 1,500 neighborhood and landlord/tenant disputes. She also served as lead trainer for Connecticut's Eviction Prevention & Foreclosure and Security Deposit programs. Berta thinks that mediation is key to preserving relationships between landlords and tenants. This is especially important now in the wake of Covid-19 and the end of the State’s eviction moratorium, but the need for these mediation services will not end with the pandemic.

While parties do not always agree, the non-adversarial nature of mediation allows people to hear each other and see where the other is coming from. Berta says, "In landlord-tenant disputes, tenants often think that all landlords are greedy or wealthy; and landlords often think that tenants simply don’t want to have to pay their rent." In Berta’s experience, often the reality is neither of these things are true—both landlords and tenants are simply trying to survive. Landlords are motivated by the need to run their business and support their families, while tenants are sometimes forced to choose between paying their rent or feeding their children. Berta added, "Mediation opens the door for individuals to explore these nuances and humanizes each party, which ultimately can reveal, restore, and repair these relationships in a way that court battles simply do not allow."

Berta wishes people would be motivated by their desire to repair relationships rather than “have their day in court”. Berta says, “Individuals should not be forced to mediate, but people should be aware of their options and be encouraged to mediate before entering a contentious court battle.” She agrees with former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who said, “the courts of this country should not be places where the resolution of disputes begins. They should be the places where disputes end after alternative methods of resolving disputes have been considered and tried.”

While mediations don’t always result in agreements, Berta believes that there is power in validating people’s feelings. She says, “courts are in control of the outcome, but mediators are able to control the process”. As a mediator, you are given the opportunity to restore broken relationships and help people to understand one another. She explains, “feelings don’t count in court, but in mediation when someone is upset you don’t just move along, you are able to stop and check-in. Mediators are given the unique power of neutrality. By not advocating for either party, they are able to facilitate conversations that might change each party’s perspective of one another."

Her favorite thing about mediation is that it allows individuals to heal. She believes strongly that mediation empowers individuals to have a voice. “People are able to be heard without interruption,” she says, “there is no one saying ‘overruled’ or ‘objection’ while they are trying to tell their story.” Berta hopes that in the future courts will be more supportive of private mediation. She believes that if courts supported mediation, maintain relationships with private mediators, and trusted private mediation, everyone would benefit across the board emotionally, mentally, and financially. “Mediation should be a requirement for anyone working in a field where you play an adversarial role. We have lost the ability to really see other people, and mediation helps people to humanize an opposing party.” She cautions individuals not to underestimate the power to be found in mutual understanding. She finished by saying, “there is more than one way for people to win—someone doesn’t always need to get hurt for someone else to win”.

Inaugural Dispute Resolution Works-in-Progress Consortium Virtual Speaker Series…

January 2021 session hosted by Quinnipiac

  • Cornelis Baaij, Associate Professor, Utrecht Law School; WIP "Show Me the Money: An Empirical Method for Uncovering Arbitration's De Facto Rules for Damages"; Mentor Stephen Ware, University of Kansas School of Law.

  • Hannah Bloch-Wehba, Associate Professor, Texas A&M Law School; WIP "Visible Policing: Technology, Transparency, And Democratic Control"; Mentor Amy Cohen, University of New South Wales.

February 2021 session hosted by Texas A&M

  • Laura Frase, Assistant Professor, Dallas College of Law, University of North Texas; WIP “Refining Our Thinking About Thinking: Battling the Sway of Cognitive Biases in Negotiation”; Mentor Jim Stark, University of Connecticut School of Law.

  • Mohammad Hamdy, Visiting Assistant Professor, Tulane University School of Law; WIP "(De)Fragmentation in International Investment Arbitration: Harmonization as a Stabilizer of the Case Law"; Mentor Marcio Vasconcellos, Adjunct Professor, Pepperdine Straus Institute.

March 2021 session hosted by Ohio State

  • Andrew Mamo, Assistant Professor, Northern Illinois University College of Law; WIP “Against Resolution: Dialogue, Demonstration, and Dispute Resolution”; Mentor Jen Reynolds, University of Oregon School of Law

  • Gilat Bachar, Visiting Assistant Professor, Villanova University School of Law; WIP “The Psychology of Secret Settlements”; Mentor J.J. Prescott, University of Michigan Law School

April 2021 session hosted by Marquette

  • Vera Korzun, Associate Professor of Law, University of Akron School of Law; WIP “Beyond the Name and Nationality: Who are the Claimants in Investment Arbitration?”; Mentor Susan Franck, American University Washington College of Law

  • Rose Rameau, Arbitrator, Attorney & Founding Partner, Rameau International Law, Washington, D.C.; WIP “The Pan-African Investment Code as a Model for Negotiation on the Investment Protocol to the Agreement Establishing the African Continental Free Trade Area”; Mentor Andrea Bjorklund, McGill University Faculty of Law.


Consortium Members

For more information about this speaker series, please visit the CDR website: click here

Our Fall 2021 Alumni Spotlight Features: Jamie SaintPaul, J.D. 2020

Jamie SaintPaul graduated from Quinnipiac University School of Law in 2020 with a concentration in Civil Advocacy and Dispute Resolution with honors. Her decision to attend law school started early in childhood. This longstanding interest led her to enroll in Quinnipiac University’s 3+3 BA/JD Program, where she majored in Legal Studies. It was during her undergraduate studies that she was first introduced and drawn to alternative dispute resolution, specifically mediation. Prior to law school, she interned and worked as a Legal Assistant at Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services (IRIS) in New Haven.

During her time at Quinnipiac Law, she gained experience in various practice areas including immigration, employment, family law, and special education through internships and externships at local non-profit organizations and law firms. However, she was brought back to her first love of mediation when an opportunity to complete an externship with the QU CHRO Mediation Project. Through this project and Quinnipiac Law’s 40-Hour Mediation Training, she started the process of cultivating her mediation skills.

Since graduating from Quinnipiac Law, she has worked with Quinnipiac's Homelessness Mitigation Mediation Project as a Mediation Fellow. Through this work, she saw first hand the impact that mediation could have on rebuilding tenant and landlord relationships. Recently, she has started working as a Mediation Specialist Trainee for the Connecticut Judicial Branch, focusing on housing cases. During her short time in this position, she has been able to apply many of the skills she acquired during her time at Quinnipiac. She will also be serving on the next Executive Committee of the Connecticut Bar Association’s Alternate Dispute Resolution Section.

She encourages any students interested in dispute resolution not to limit their idea of what the practice of law can look like. Through classes, trainings, and other experiences, you expose yourself to practice areas that you may not have known of or would not have considered. The worse case scenario is you find yourself uninterested in it, but you still can take all of the skills that you learned into your future career. There is always a need for attorneys who are able to approach conflict in a collaborative way, so she definitely recommends incorporating alternative dispute resolution into your law school experience.

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February Marks the Start of Center's Homeless Mitigation Mediation Program

The Connecticut Department of Housing invited Quinnipiac University School of Law to develop and implement a 6-month pilot statewide eviction prevention program, which began February 1. The program, the Homelessness Mitigation Mediation Program (HMMP), is intended to help address the looming homelessness crisis expected after the State’s current eviction moratorium ends April 19. The HMMP is a joint venture involving the Law School’s Center on Dispute Resolution (CDR) and its Clinical Legal Education Program.

HMMP’s Executive Director is Brendan Holt, a practicing attorney, mediator, and CDR Senior Fellow, who currently also is employed part-time as an adjunct professor and director of Quinnipiac Law’s new Mediation Clinic. Berta Holmes is the program’s Associate Director, who for many years was the eviction and foreclosure prevention program manager and housing mediator trainer at Community Mediation, Inc., in New Haven and Hamden, CT. Remaining HMMP staff include Mediation Clinic Fellow Jamie SaintPaul, QUSL JD, 2020, and a bilingual Mediation Client Services Coordinator, who will begin later this month.

A multi-disciplinary program, HMMP involves lawyers, mediators, and social workers working together to prevent homelessness. Holmes notes that mediation can have a role in helping address homelessness crisis because the nature of mediation allows for an even playing field, which empowers people.  She adds, mediation can be a better alternative than going to court because when a case does go to court, many tenants feel intimidated and powerless, and they are not willing to be open about their story.  

The most notable feature of HMMP is that students from the Law School’s Mediation Clinic will volunteer to be mediators or co-mediators for the program. HMMP’s Executive Director Brendan Holt says that the project will allow students to gain both academic and real-world experience and the students will be able to potentially bring innovative solutions to the homelessness problem.  Dean of the Law School, Jennifer Brown, notes that the program builds on to the school’s mission to nurture internal and local communities.  She also feels that the program will further enhance the student’s understanding of mediation and the complexities of business relationships, which she views as being central to becoming ethical and effective lawyers. 

Our Spring Alumni Spotlight Features: Courtney Shields, J.D. 2018

Courtney Shields graduated from Quinnipiac University School of Law in 2018 with a concentration in Civil Advocacy and Dispute Resolution. Prior to attending law school, Shields graduated from Susquehanna University with a Bachelors in Political Science. She then deferred her enrollment with the law school to spend a year living in Dublin, Ireland to work as an event coordinator at a 5-star hotel in the city centre. 

Shields officially enrolled at Quinnipiac University School of Law in fall of 2015. She devoted her time at QUSL to several different student-run organizations, but always gravitated towards Alternative Dispute Resolution as an underlying theme in her approach to problem solving. Shields’ first certified legal internship was at the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities (CHRO), where she was introduced to mediation in cases of discrimination in employment and public accommodation. Shields then completed the Center’s 40-Hour Mediation Training and later became one of the first students to take part in the CHRO Mediation Project, which helped lay the foundation for the school’s new in-house Mediation Clinic. 

Shields went on to spend the fall semester of her 3L year interning at the South African Human Rights Commission in Cape Town, South Africa. There, she was able to put her client counseling and mediation skills to the test in a multi-cultural city with 11 different national languages. That same year, Shields was also elected President of SDR and served as the Center’s Student Co-Fellow.

As the Center Student Co-Fellow, she represented the Center at the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution 2017 Spring Conference in San Francisco and assisted with the Center’s Annual Speaker Series. Shields also served as Director of the ABA Regional Representation in Mediation Competition, while competing and coaching in ABA Regional Negotiation and Client Counselling competitions as well. 

After graduating in 2018, Shields worked as a recruiter for QUSL’s Admissions Office, traveling around the country on behalf of the school the following year, while waiting to hear that she successfully passed the NY State Bar Exam. Afterward, she put her client counseling skills to use as a Temporary Assistant Clerk in family court at the New Haven Superior Courthouse. 

Currently, Shields’ early career has come full circle as she recently completed her first year as a Human Rights and Opportunities Trainee with the State of Connecticut’s Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities. There, she mediates and investigates claims of discrimination while working with the Commission’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee to help educate the general public on the fundamentals of client counselling, education and empathy. In her spare time, she still coaches and judges ADR Competitions for QUSL and is working on learning to speak Spanish. 

When asked if she had any advice for students interested in a career in ADR, Shields said students should think outside the box when it comes to ADR. Students would be surprised how useful mediation, negotiation, and client counseling can be in both traditional and non-traditional legal roles. Effective communication and active listening skills are beneficial in any profession, not to mention in our own personal lives. Shields’ final piece of advice to law students is to always seek new opportunities, but know when you find the right fit for you.


To see Shields’ bio, click here.

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New WIP JR. Virtual DR Speaker Series

QUSL and the CDR are establishing a virtual Works-in-Progress workshop for Junior Dispute Resolution Scholars!

Quinnipiac University School of Law (QUSL) and its Center on Dispute Resolution (CDR) are involved in organizing a consortium to establish a virtual Works-in-Progress (WIP) workshop program for Junior DR Scholars. We are pleased to be working with the AALS Section of Dispute Resolution, which for 15 years has sponsored an outstanding annual in-person WIP conference. In addition to the AALS DR Section, this consortium will include the following nationally recognized law school DR programs:

We think the audience for these virtual workshops will include not only other DR law faculty, but also DR scholars from all academic disciplines, as well as experienced DR practitioners. Indeed, we may decide to solicit WIPs not only from law school faculty, but also from Junior DR Scholars in other academic disciplines.

In addition, another question we have is how to define “Junior”? 

For example, should it be defined as...

  • DR scholars with fewer than 10 years in teaching, whether full or part time, regardless of age; or

  • DR faculty under 40, whether tenured or non-tenured; or

  • YOU tell us how YOU think we should define "Junior". Email your suggestions to CDR Co-Director Charlie Pillsbury.

New Dispute Resolution Clinics at QUSL

Mediation Clinic launched August 2020

We are very pleased to report that our “CHRO Mediation Program” has evolved into a Mediation Clinic to provide free mediation services in various types of cases. We are also pleased that our Center Senior Fellow Brendan Holt has agreed to serve as Mediation Clinic Director. This new clinic is the third of our in-house clinics within the “law firm” operated by the law school, joining our Civil Justice and Tax Clinics, and expanding the important access to justice mission of our in-house clinics. 

Our students have been able to earn credits while mediating for 20 years through our Mediation Externship, and this will continue. Our focus now will be to develop a robust caseload for this new clinic. The Clinic will continue to work with the Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities (CHRO) which refers employment discrimination cases for mediation. Professor Holt currently working to add homelessness and eviction prevention cases (see next story). We also expect to mediate family matters, and possibly neighborhood disputes, especially those that affect the University's relationships with the towns of Hamden and North Haven.

Innovative Transactional Clinic offered in Summer 2020

QUSL is the very first law school to offer a law clinic taught by the world-renowned J. Kim Wright, the “legal rebel” who founded the Integrative Law Movement, and authored “Lawyers as Peacemakers”. Professor Wright and her colleague New York Attorney Jacqueline Horani undertook the challenge of teaching a virtual clinic to law students in transactional practice applying some familiar ADR principles to business formation and drafting work. The Clinic incorporated the “Conscious Contracts” practice model from Linda Alvarez’s book, “Discovering Agreement: Contracts That Turn Conflicts into Creativity.” Using that approach, for example, our students helped parties seeking to work together to develop a dispute resolution plan called an ACED Agreement—committing to each other upfront how they will “Address Change and Express Disagreement” before beginning a joint project or starting a new business.

Center Will Participate in Pilot Statewide Housing Security Mediation Program

Center Will Participate in Pilot Statewide Housing Security Mediation Program

The Connecticut Department of Housing (DOH) invited Quinnipiac’s Center on Dispute Resolution (CDR) to participate in a 6-month pilot statewide housing security mediation program to address the looming homelessness crisis expected after the State’s current eviction moratorium ends October 1. 

This new program, which will rely on experienced volunteer mediators, is a joint endeavor involving the CDR, the Law School’s Clinical Legal Education Program, DOH, social service agencies, legal service organizations and Partnership for Strong Communities, a statewide nonprofit policy and advocacy organization dedicated to ending and preventing homelessness.

Program staff will include:

· Executive Director Brendan Holt, an attorney and mediator in private practices, also employed as an adjunct professor and the law school’s Mediation Clinic Director.

· Associate Director Berta Holmes worked for Community Mediation, Inc. (CM) from 1997-2015, and oversaw CM’s housing mediation programs. She also served as the lead trainer for the now defunct state-sponsored Eviction and Foreclosure Prevention Program.

· Bilingual Mediation Case Manager, yet to be hired, will maintain the program’s mediation case records; follow-up successful mediations; and serve as a mediator or translator, when needed.

· Mediation Clinic Fellow, Jamie SaintPaul, JD, 2020, will work with DOH and its statewide network of social services to schedule mediations' follow-up successful mediations; and serve as a mediator, when needed.

What Competitors, Judges, and Coaches Think About Online Competitions

Virtual Competition via Zoom: Feedback from Competitors, Judges and Coaches!

Competitors' Perspectives:

When law schools transitioned to online learning, everyone expected all competitions would end for the year, and competitors would be unable to compete in the remaining regional and national competitions. Quinnipiac University School of Law, however, decided to move forward and host the ABA National Client Counseling Competition to allow the regional winners to showcase their skills and hard work in one final competition. While competitors agreed that this was a completely unexpected transition, they thought it reflected the reality of practicing in the ever changing legal field.

Peter Johnson from Stetson University College of Law said that he thinks “[v]ideo conferencing will be an ever-increasing part of the legal profession as technology improves and more legal professionals become comfortable with using the platforms. Competitions should reflect the realities of law practice and using video conferencing in competition will prepare us better for using the technology in practice.” Other competitors agreed that video conferencing will likely play a more prominent role in the legal profession and said that this competition provided them with an experience that will enable them to be innovative and more productive when in-person meetings may not be possible for any number of reasons.

The competition was not, however, without its challenges. Mr. Johnson explained that when it comes to interviewing a client virtually, “[y]ou have to change your approach. It is not the same as in-person consultations. There are different challenges and different potential issues that need to be addressed.” One of the biggest issues competitors thought they had to overcome was building rapport with their clients. When interviewing a client, the non-verbal cues that a client or even your co-counsel may be sending are much easier to read in person than over video. For example, it can be hard to tell if someone is fidgeting with their hands uncomfortably if the video doesn't show their hands. In other words, according to Mr. Johnson, “the impersonal nature of Zoom conferencing meant that it took a little bit longer to establish rapport and put the client at ease.”

Another major challenge faced by competitors during the online competition was the technology. Depending on internet connections and download speeds, there can be a lag in Zoom videos, or even videos or audio freezing completely. This posed a unique problem for a client interviews because, as Mr. Johnson noted, it was “very easy to talk over each other” if the video or audio cut out or froze. His advice was to “say upfront that the audio or video may cut out, but the client can let you know that it has and to not hesitate to ask to hear something again. Because of the risk of technology cutting out, it is helpful to use more concise explanations rather than explain something for a couple minutes.”

Even with these challenges, competitors agreed that a great way to move forward with future competitions, would be to hold part of a competition in-person, but also give students the opportunity to do some of it online. This would promote one of the main goals of law school competitions, which is to give students real-life experiences in lawyering skills, including the innovative use of technology.

Judges' Perspectives:

Judges for this online competition came from a variety of backgrounds, including practicing attorneys, retired judges, mental health professionals and social workers. Most competition judges reported they would have preferred the competition to have been live instead of virtual. When live, it is much easier for the attorneys and client to build rapport and recognize verbal and nonverbal signals; for judges to take notes on a laptop or in person; and generally, for a better process. The judges all acknowledged, however, that there were some benefits that the virtual competition provided both competitors and judges. 

One judge, Jennifer Luise-Champagne, MA, LPC, said that “it may be more cost-effective for the schools to be able to continue to participate in this manner, as it would reduce travel and related expenses.” She added that it may open the opportunity to more students to have the ability to compete. Another judge, Attorney Ellin Grenger, said that, “this is a realistic competition style, and should be worked in as at least a module in future competitions. I am certain COVID 19 will likely lead to industry changes.” Judges agreed that the online competition was very convenient and saved a lot of travel time. Also, Zoom allowed the judges to remain muted with their cameras off, so competitors were able to focus on the competition rather than the judges.

One of the biggest challenges the judges faced was adjusting to using Zoom technology. Sometimes there was a delay, and audio was not always clear. Ms. Luise-Champagne said “one of the teams acknowledged the limitations of the zoom process right at the outset. I thought that was great because it helped everyone to be mindful of that.”

Tips from judges for anyone who has not judged virtually:

  • Don't decline doing it just because it's unfamiliar.

  • Keep in mind that organizers and competitors have spent a lot of time on preparation and logistics.

  • Be sure to test your devices in advance; have a back up plan; and keep some water, tissues, etc., nearby. 

  • Finally, remember you are on camera, and what's behind you is also visible to others on Zoom!

A Coach's Perspective:

When the ABA National Client Counseling Competition moved to an online format, Coach Chelsea Vetre stepped up and helped prepare her team for a very different competition than any of them were expecting. Ms. Vetre noted that, while it was unusual and there were many challenges they faced along the way, “the core values I implement while coaching continued. Zoom made it incredibly easy to give real time feedback to my competitors and gave us the ability to connect at any time in any place. Furthermore, we were able to have more productive and longer meetings because the virtuality cut off other time wasting activities, such as driving to the school to practice.”

One challenge observed by coaches was ensuring that competitors did not talk over one another or the client, because Zoom only shows peoples' faces and their full body language cannot be interpreted. The competitors were required to become well acquainted with being comfortable with pauses to ensure the speaker was finished talking and to ensure someone else wasn’t going to begin speaking. Ms. Vetre also noted that during in-person competitions, judges may not always focus on individual competitors’ facial expressions during the entirety of the rounds, merely focusing on the speaker and not the other members in the room. However, in the online competition, “each competitor was laid out on the screen, making them visible and easy to see at all times.” Accordingly, if a competitor made a face or did not have their “game-face” ready at all times, it was easily noticed. 

Another challenge was making sure that the client knew that when competitors were looking down, they were just taking notes and not looking away for any other reason, including finding ways to communicate with each other during rounds. There were no pads of paper in between the competitors on which to jot down notes, as would have been the case if the competitors were sitting next to each other. One coaching tip Ms. Vetre said helped her team was having “competitors use shorthand 'codes' for what they wanted to communicate to one another and us[ing] the chat feature to talk to one another.” 

The biggest fear coaches and competitors had during the competition was whether or not technology would fail or someone would be left off an invite or email. However, the competition ran smoothly, and coaches and competitors agreed they would be willing to compete virtually again. 

Ms. Vetre indicated that the virtual format could be helpful for conducting preliminary rounds in competitions, or intramural rounds, but emphasized that there is an importance in having these competitions in-person for the competitors to connect with and showcase their skills to the judges. She added that, in moving forward and coaching another team, she would suggest that more practices be held virtually. “[W]e do not have to have every single session in-person, and the client does not need to be [physically] present during the sessions. As many know, it can be tough to find a client so having the ability to have everyone, or just the client, hop on Zoom can make life much easier.”

When asked what advice she had for anyone who has not competed or coached virtually before, she counseled, “Be patient. The technology and numerous emails can be overwhelming at times. However, after a few days you will get in the swing of things and it will be effortless and comfortable. Also, even if you have the ability to host in-person practices, try to hold at least 75% via Zoom, so your competitors get the hang of Zoom. It can be very distracting to see a mirrored image of yourself talking on the computer, unlike in an in-person competition, and may take time to get used to.”

SDR TEAM WINS NATIONAL COMPETITION

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Brandy Perry, JD ‘20 and Megan Spicer, JD ‘20 began competing together during their first year at Quinnipiac Law School when, as 1Ls, they tried out for the Society for Dispute Resolution (SDR) Competition Team. They won Best Client Counseling at that intramural competition and competed later that academic year in the 2018 ABA Regional Client Counseling Competition, where they advanced to the semifinals. Meg and Brandy became good friends early in law school and credit that friendship as helping them know each others’ strengths.

Brandy and Meg placed fourth overall in the preliminary round of their region's 2020 ABA Client Counseling Competition, again making it to the semi-final round. In the final round of the regional competition they placed second; but, unfortunately, only the first-place team advances to the national competition. 

Much to their surprise, however, Meg and Brandy were not done competing. After the national competition became virtual, several teams dropped out; and Meg and Brandy were invited to compete at the ABA National Client Counseling Competition, which, while hosted by Quinnipiac Law School, would now take place virtually. Initially, Brandy and Meg were hesitant to compete in the new virtual format, but decided they had nothing to lose, as they were expecting only to be hosting, not competing, in the nationals. In the preliminary round they placed sixth, tying with the same team that had won the Regional Competition. As the sixth-place seed, they had to compete against the first-place team in the semifinal round -- and they prevailed and advanced to the final round. It was a very close final round of the competition, with almost an hour of deliberation by the judges. In the end, the judges unanimously selected Meg and Brandy as the 2020 National Champions, in large part because they were the most genuine and natural, in additional to being very skilled.

Because the entire national competition was done remotely, Brandy and Meg “met” with their clients via Zoom, with everyone in separate locations. This presented some challenges, as the extensive teamwork required for this competition had the potential to be limited by a virtual platform. They took advantage, however, of Zoom's private chat function, which simulated the notes they would normally have shared on paper during an in-person competition. There were also a few hiccups along the way, including one client who remained muted at the beginning of one of their counseling sessions.

Meg and Brandy were the only team to hold all their meetings completely remotely, even from each other, in separate locations. (At the time, lock-down orders varied from state-to-state) This fact ultimately helped them in the long run, as they became very comfortable using Zoom sooner than the other teams. When interviewed, they said: “It feels good. It’s been a fantastic circle, to have started together as 1Ls competing in the intramural to ending as 3Ls who are national champions. This feels like an incredible redemption arc.” 

Brandy and Meg added a few final thoughts after participating in this virtual competition:

  • Adaptability will be crucial for the future of law.

  • Remote meetings are not as difficult or awkward as anticipated.

  • This experience gave them critical skills they will need to succeed in the future.

  • The Zoom platform is incredibly flexible and provides a lot of opportunities for the dispute resolution field.

QUSL hosted ABA's First Virtual National Competition!

QUSL's Center on Dispute Resolution & Society for Dispute Resolution Host ABA's First Virtual National Competition!

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In Fall 2019, the Quinnipiac Society for Dispute Resolution (SDR) with the support from the Center on Dispute Resolution began planning for hosting the ABA National Client Counseling Competition in during the Spring 2020 semester. This meant finding over 20 mock clients, booking rooms in the law school, organizing meals for incoming competitors, and recruiting local attorneys, judges, and mental health professionals to serve as competition judges.

When the COVID-19 virus caused law schools around the country to close their campuses for the safety of the students, staff and faculty, SDR student officers, with Carolyn Wilkes Kaas, Associate Professor of Law, Co-Director of the DR Center, and Associate Dean of Experiential Education, began to brainstorm with the ABA ways to host this national competition online. The idea of hosting an online national competition via Zoom would give the student teams who had won their regional competitions the opportunity to compete for the national title, rather than cancel due to the pandemic.

Professor Kaas worked directly with the ABA to develop rules and formatting to provide both competitors and judges with the information they needed to hold this competition in this unprecedented time. Fortunately, competition judges, who had previously agreed to participate in the in-person competition, were quick to adapt to this new format and excited about the opportunity that SDR and the Center were offering future lawyers.

The virtual competition not only would provide some semblance of normalcy in these chaotic times, but also would give competitors the skills to work with clients on an online platform, something increasingly relevant in today’s world! Professor Kaas, SDR President Jessica McDade, JD '20, SDR Internal Competition Director Patrick Hoerle, JD '21, and DR Center Student Fellows Angela Tylock, JD '21 and Ashley Cervin, JD '21 led the conversion of the competition from an in-person event into an online contest.

The Client Counseling Competition requires that teams of two students work with a mock client to conduct an initial interview, in which they address both the legal and non-legal needs of the client. The competitors explain the attorney-client relationship, build rapport with their clients, determine client goals, and consider applicable law to develop various options for the client. Typically, the competition is structured so that the competitors are in a room with their client and 2-3 judges who students' skills in interviewing and counseling their client. Team coaches are also usually in the room, but must remain silent during the competition. Following their interview with the client, competitors engage in a post-consultation evaluation with each other to discuss what next steps to take with the client and what concerns they have.

To convert this face-to-face scenario into an online competition, for the preliminary round, competitors were asked to record themselves interviewing their client; the recordings were then sent to the judges; and the judging was done asynchronously. Each team faced challenges with how to create their recordings, given that COVID-19 social distancing guidelines prevented them from all being in the same room at the same time. Competitors used Zoom to hold 3-way video calls to meet with their client and complete this round of the competition.

Generally, in the preliminary round, competition rules require three client counseling sessions per team; that is, Team A meets separately to interview and advise clients X, Y, and Z . The sum of the scores from these three interviews is Team A’s preliminary round score. To adapt the competition to an online format, we decided that one of the interviews would be converted to a memo advising the clients in writing.

The semifinal round involved each of the qualifying teams recording just one client interview on Zoom and was judged synchronously. The Final Round was also conducted with the client, the competitors, and the judges all on the same Zoom call. Judges were muted, but watched the competition live.

After the competition was over the Center's Student Fellows interviewed judges, competitors, and team coaches about what worked well and what might be done differently next time. Competitors, judges and coaches all recommended, for example, requiring future ABA competitions to hold one round online to give competitors the skills to work with clients remotely, as this may become a standard part of the practice of law by the time they graduate.

This first online national competition went surprisingly well, and SDR and the Center look forward to hosting another national competition in the future, whether online or in-person. In the meantime, because the pandemic has yet to abate, the ABA has decided that its 2020-21 Client Counseling Competition will be entirely virtual. As Quinnipiac is the only law school with any experience hosting a virtual client counseling competition, its experience has become the template for host schools to follow this coming year.

Quinnipiac/Yale 2019-2020 – Cancelled Speakers

Quinnipiac/Yale 2019-2020 – Cancelled Speakers

Please be advised that the following talks, all part of the Quinnipiac-Yale Dispute Resolution Workshop speaker series, have been cancelled and will be rescheduled in Fall 2020.

1.     Amy Schmitz, University of Missouri School of Law
"E-Court Initiatives", Friday, March 20, 2020, at Quinnipiac University School of Law

2.     Calvin Duncan, Program Director for the Light of Justice,
"Lawyering on the Inside: Access to Justice Behind Prison Walls", Tuesday, April 7, 2020, at Quinnipiac University School of Law

3.     Jean Sternlight University of Nevada, Las Vegas William S. Boyd School of Law
"Mandatory Arbitration & #MeToo", Thursday, April 16, 2020, at Yale Law School

Quinnipiac welcomes Professor Ellen Waldman for Spring 2020!

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Quinnipiac is pleased to welcome Professor Ellen Waldman for the Spring 2020 semester!

Professor Waldman visited Quinnipiac once before in the fall of 2008-2009, where she taught a variety of courses, including Alternate Dispute Resolution, Therapeutic Jurisprudence, and Bioethics. Currently, she is teaching Negotiations and covering the ethics curriculum in the medical school.

Medical students receive information and training about how to manage ethical issues arising the course of patient care throughout their 4 years in the classroom. In the first year, students are exposed to the underlying foundational theories that ground medical ethics concepts. Law students who majored in philosophy would be well-familiar with these theories; utilitarianism, deontological thinking and virtue ethics. As student proceed through their second and third years, they learn how these general theories are relevant to concrete subject matter, such as informed consent, the allocation of scarce resources and disputes over end of life care. By the end of their fourth year, students will have been exposed to negotiation and conflict resolution skills and provided some opportunity to practice the “soft skills” that most of us would want our physicians at the bedside to have. Professor Waldman believes that a strong grounding in ethical reasoning as well conflict resolution basics is as important to a medical student’s ability to practice as a thorough understanding of anatomy or pathology.

Professor Waldman explained how her early experiences in law practice led to her dual interests in dispute resolution and bioethics. When she first started practicing law, she was working at a litigation firm in Washington, D.C. on a huge insurance defense case involving a major manufacturer. The case had been going on in four separate jurisdictions, attended to by four major law firms, at the time her firm inherited the case. The files were voluminous, the work unending, the pace snail-like and the legal bills enormous. It was at this time she began to think that perhaps litigation was not the most societally efficient means of addressing conflict. She pursued mediation training at night and ultimately left the firm to obtain an L.L.M. in Mental Health Law at University of Virginia. Although the L.L.M. program was designed to train lawyers to represent mentally disabled clients, Professor Waldman used her time at Virginia to study dispute resolution specifically mediation. She essentially created her own program. She worked at a mediation center and, at the same time, took a bioethics course in the medical school.

While she was completing her L.L.M., she worked as a fellow at the Institute of Law, Psychiatry, and Public Policy in Charlottesville, Virginia as a discussion leader in the Bioethics course, which included medical students, lawyers, law students, and nurses. The interdisciplinary aspect was especially interesting as each contributor brought a different perspective, based on his or her education and experience, to bear on the complex issues under discussion. In 1992, Professor Waldman joined Thomas Jefferson School of Law (TJSL). At TJSL, she taught torts, remedies, bioethics, and ran the externship and judicial internship programs. (She said when you have been somewhere a long time, you end up doing a bit of everything). She founded and supervises the school’s Mediation Program. She has taught mediation-related courses nationally and internationally and has published over 25 articles and book chapters in the areas of alternative dispute resolution and bioethics.

Professor Waldman explained that mediation includes lots of different approaches, and the primary ethics rules guiding the profession were generated with the idea that parties would enter into mediation with attorneys. She is troubled by the plight of self -represented parties who find themselves in mediation without understanding their legal rights or alternatives to settlement. When self-represented parties ask mediators to help them assess their settlement options compared to the likelihood of success (or failure) outside of court, mediators are required by existing ethics rules to deflect the question. Mediation advocates frequently proclaim that mediation increases access to justice; Professor has just published an article questioning whether this thesis is true with regard to self-represented litigants and wondering whether the development of machine learning might meet the needs of low-resourced parties will protecting mediators from ethically compromising activities.

Prior to law school, Professor Waldman taught film and English at the American International School in Israel. Following law school, Professor Waldman clerked for the Honorable Myron Bright of the Eighth Circuit in Fargo, North Dakota and joined a litigation firm in Washington, D.C., specializing in insurance defense. While practicing in Washington, D.C., Professor Waldman received mediation training and subsequently was awarded a scholarship in 1990 to pursue an LL.M. in this area. While pursuing her LL.M. degree, she was a fellow at the Institute of Law, Psychiatry, and Public Policy in Charlottesville, Virginia.

A member of the TJSL faculty since 1992, Professor Waldman founded and supervises the school’s Mediation Program, which affords students an opportunity to mediate disputes in small claims court. In that capacity, she has secured grant funding from federal and local agencies, foundations and non-profits.  She has taught mediation-related courses nationally and internationally and has published over 25 articles and book chapters in the areas of alternative dispute resolution and bioethics. Most recently, she has published Mediation Ethics: Case and Commentaries, an in-depth treatment of the many hard cases that can arise in mediation practice.

Deliberative Dialogue Moderator Training

On September 19th and 20th, Quinnipiac’s Center on Dispute Resolution hosted a one and one-half day workshop on how to moderate deliberative dialogues, one of many dialogue methodologies used to bring citizens together to reason and talk and to deliberate about contentious public policy issues. The workshop, which was led by Loraine Della Porta and Bill Logue, guided participants through the National Issues Forum (NIF) model, which provides a way for people of diverse views and experiences to seek a shared understanding of the problem and search for common ground for action.

Participants learned how issues are framed for deliberation, how to convene and organize such forums, and how to facilitate a deliberative dialogue. They then had the opportunity to act as moderators and engage in a real dialogue session on important policies issues, including the opioid crisis and our current political system.

CTAMP Receives Recertification for FY2020

The Connecticut Agricultural Mediation Program (CTAMP), which is administered through the Quinnipiac University School of Law Center on Dispute Resolution recently received re-certification by the USDA to operate at Connecticut’s official Agricultural Mediation Program for the fiscal year 2020.

Since being certified in 2015, CTAMP has been providing mediation services for issues involving agricultural loans, USDA actions on farm and conservation programs, wetlands determinations, and rural housing and business loans.

CTAMP is happy to announce that as a result of the 2018 Farm Bill (Pub. L. 115-334), the following issues and related disputes will also be covered by our program:

  • The National Organic Program established under the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990

  • Lease issues, including land leases and equipment leases

  • Family farm transitions

  • Other issues as the Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Agriculture considers appropriate for better serving the agricultural community and persons eligible for mediation

The 2018 Farm Bill further authorizes that funding provided to State Certified Mediation Programs may be used to offer credit counseling to covered persons before the initiation of any mediation involving USDA or unrelated to any ongoing dispute or mediation in which USDA is a party.