Saltman Center to Host Regional Summit on ADR's Evolution

Alternative dispute resolution (ADR) certainly has come a long way since the famous Pound Conference in 1976, during which lawyers, judges, and law schools were urged to expand their world beyond litigation. Negotiation, mediation, and arbitration are now fully integrated into the practice of law across virtually all fields, which helps explain why the majority of today’s legal quarrels are settled outside of a courtroom.

ADR’s widespread growth, however, has presented challenges both within academia and throughout the broader legal community. In order to give academics specializing in the field an opportunity to address and overcome these challenges, the Saltman Center for Conflict Resolution will host a gathering on December 7 and 8. The first West Coast Dispute Resolution Conversation will bring together about two dozen dispute-resolution faculty from nine West Coast institutions in four states.

Hosted on the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law campus, the gathering will feature an open dialogue about how ADR is evolving and how this evolution impacts everything from teaching to scholarship to hiring practices.  

“Our goal is to give faculty from neighboring schools the chance to chat about how our field is and should be changing, to reflect changes in legal academia and the world more generally,” says Jean Sternlight, the Michael and Sonja Saltman Professor of Law at Boyd and Director of the Saltman Center for Conflict Resolution. “Our conversations will touch on teaching and scholarship pertaining to legal dispute resolution and will also cover our own roles as faculty and administrators.”