NSF Award
9561347
9561347 Klein There is substantial public and private interest in encouraging mediated settlements and a growing infrastructure to support mediation as a means of conflict resolution. While successful mediators may often "think like lawyers," they have different goals and employ different methods and reasoning processes. Despite the centrality of the use of precedents in the United States legal system, there is no body of precedents from which to work in mediated settlements. This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project proposes to analyze the cognitive aspects of the expertise of mediation professionals who are called upon to resolve tough and high-profile disputes in order to design support tools to assist experts and novices in "thinking like mediators." In-depth interviews with expert mediators will center on expert-novice differences and mediators' use of analogical reasoning from prior cases. The firm, Klein Associates Inc., will develop a prototype to test the feasibility of supporting mediation through the use of case-based reasoning. The prototype will include a small case base of conflict resolution precedents which a mediator can retrieve and use. The next phase of the research will focus on more in-depth research into mediation expertise and further development of the prototype's ability to retrieve similar cases and to present retrieved cases so as to support their application to a mediation problem. Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) is an important area in the legal practice community. Currently there is tremendous pressure on attorneys to learn it and use it to avoid costly trials as evidenced by the proliferation of ADR courses offered by state bar associations.. This timely project aims to make available a computer assisted support tool to serve mediators within specific organizations and one providing a broader range of knowledge and precedents to be made widely available to any paying subscriber.
