CHANCELLOR’S PROFESSOR CARRIE MENKEL-MEADOW of the University of CA., Irvine, is one of the intellectual founders of our field of dispute resolution.  She was on the law faculty at UCLA from 1979-1996.  While at UCLA, she started one of the first law school mediation clinics, after training with Gary Friedman.  Along with Stephanie Smith, Carrie taught the first group of mediators for the ADR Program at the USDC-N. CA.   She then taught for many years as the A.B. Chettle Professor Law at Georgetown Law School, where she was one of the first three law school teachers in the US to teach a course on negotiation.

Carrie is a teaching legend and research guru. Her prize-winning article in the 1984 UCLA Law Review depicted the model attorney as a professional who engages in creative problem solving, who probes into the deeper interests and concerns of her client, who encourages consensus and putting out fires rather than seeking glory as an adversarial champion of litigation. Her astounding range of scholarship laid the foundation for the growth of conflict resolution and mediation.

While at Georgetown Law, she served as a volunteer mediator for the courts in DC and trained Janet Reno in mediation during her tenure as President Clinton’s Attorney General. Carrie has taught problem-solving and conflict management literally all over the planet, in more than twenty-five countries. Her decades of innovative research on this field have been captured in several leading treatises and text books that include “Dispute Resolution: Beyond the Adversary Model” (2nd ed.2012); “Negotiation: Processes for Problem Solving”(2nd ed. 2014); and “Mediation: Practice, Policy and Ethics” (2nd ed. 2013) with Lela Love and Andrea Schneider.