Published in Los Angeles Daily Journal

Several evenings earlier this month, Jews around the world gathered for traditional seders —  ceremonial dinners and services marking the commencement of the weeklong Passover holiday. At seders, the youngest in attendance asks four proscribed questions opening a dialog recounting the historical Exodus story and beginning a thoughtful discussion of its modern implications. The Exodus story relates the liberation of the Jewish people from enslavement in Egypt or mitzrayim, literally translated as “the narrow place.”

Published in Los Angeles Daily Journal

A. Bartlett Giamatti, the late commissioner of Major League Baseball, Yale professor and baseball philosopher second only to Yogi Berra, once wrote: “Baseball has the largest library of law and love and custom and ritual, and therefore, in a nation that fundamentally believes it is a nation under law, well, baseball is America's most privileged version of the level field.” It was, therefore, shocking to many when the rules were upended, and the level field tilted, by news of a cheating scandal so complex that its magnitude was dwarfed only by what many considered a failure to dispense appropriate punishment.

Published in Los Angeles Daily Journal

Driven by loss aversion, wars have been fought due to what is known as the “sunk cost fallacy.” Everything from my mother’s meatloaf, to a movie ticket, an outdated cell phone, to billions of dollars in armaments, can represent “sunk costs.” A sunk cost is one that has already been spent and cannot be recovered. Sunk costs should not be considered when making decisions. Only costs relevant to a specific decision, which may change depending on that decision, should be weighed when analyzing a course of action. But is that how our minds work? Do we need help overcoming the obstacle of the sunk cost fallacy?

Published in Daily Journal

Described by one attorney as having the “mediator’s magic,” Greg Derin employs his knowledge of entertainment, intellectual property and employment law to mediate cases.

“You’re sitting there in that room, waiting to hear how the other side’s going to respond to your proposal, and you’re saying to yourself, there’s no way they’re going to come down to the number you want,” said entertainment attorney Michael E. Weinstein, for whom Derin has settled seven cases. “Somehow, Greg comes walking in with a smile on his face. That’s his signature thing – when he’s got that smile, you know he got them to make a big move.”

Derin is far less mystical in describing his approach to mediation. In addition to his requisite legal knowledge, Derin said he finds it necessary to have a healthy respect for the emotional aspects of the work.

Published in The Advocate

Next April will mark the 40th anniversary of the birth of the modern mediation movement. In April 1976, Harvard Law Professor Frank Sander shared his vision of what came to be known as the “multi-door courthouse.” In his speech, Varieties of Dispute Processing, at the National Conference on the Causes of Popular Dissatisfaction with the Administration of Justice – commonly known as the Pound Revisited Conference – Sander shared a proposal for remodeling the American system of dispute resolution. (Frank E.A. Sander, Varieties of Dispute Processing, 70 F.R.D. 111, 131 (1976).) The litigation world would never look the same again.

When Sander addressed the conference in 1976, nearly all courts offered a single form of dispute resolution: adjudication by judge and/or jury. Sander conceived of a process in which disputes would be channeled through a screening clerk who would direct parties to the process, or sequence of processes, most appropriate to their dispute.