Happy to Help Us Get Along:

NJCU’s Institute for Dispute Resolution

Happy to Help Us Get Along:

David E. Melgar

Inaugurated into NJCU’s School of Business just last year, the Institute for Dispute Resolution can help resolve tense disagreements for the benefit of all parties. It promotes international negotiation and mediation techniques, which can be used to manage a variety of disputes, including those between investors and states, commercial entities or general conflict resolution forums.

An example of these types of disputes might be a disagreement over whose responsibility it is to handle cleanup for a polluted piece of land if two businesses are occupying the property.

Undergoing dispute resolution is a little like seeing a relationship counselor, but for your business rather than for your personal life.

The institute contributes further to the rapidly growing School of Business, displaying the school’s aims, growth, and capacity to expand its profile and connect globally. This all correlates with other increasingly international pursuits, such as the promotion of various study abroad programs.

Part of this globally-minded effort includes assembling teams of students and coaches to compete against others representing different parties. In February, for example, NJCU students attended the 11th International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) International Commercial Mediation Competition in Paris “to better meet the dispute resolution needs of an increasingly cross-cultural and global market,” according to the ICC’s website.  For NJCU, this is the second international competition following one in Vienna, Austria this past summer (which students also hope to attend again.)

Finance major and team leader, 25-year old, Amro Atitalla, spoke glowingly of the Institute, discussing how it serves as a ground for professional development.  “[It is] Exposing us to research and professionals in the real world — people who are actually in the field, people who are movers in the field.  It gives us the opportunity to learn from them and take their experience as our own.”  Atitalla, a senior, said the relationships between team members are close, adding that they have a strong accountability system, frequent (often weekly) meetings and often look towards their mentors: “We start off the year setting goals for ourselves, goals to meet competitions, programs or initiatives we can start, research to do, events to attend; we basically start checklists for ourselves with times for accomplishing a given goal.”

Aimed at resolving investor-state issues, satisfying consumers and fostering ethical business practices while resolving disputes, particularly international ones, the Institute reflects a larger trend in business leaning away from constant litigation.

Because the modern world is a tightly connected, “smaller” place, packed with interdependent markets, mediation and the skills to work in this growing field have become valuable.

In addition to symposia and continuing legal education that foster goals such as promoting New Jersey as a site of cross-border resolution, the Institute for Dispute Resolution also aims to work with programs in other international business schools. Furthermore, the business school’s student-led Alternative Dispute Resolution Society aims to ease other students into becoming more interested in the institute.

The Director for the Institute of Dispute Resolution is David S. Weiss, Esq., a visiting scholar at NJCU’s School of Business, who also heads up the Alternative Dispute Resolution Group of Weiss & Weiss LLC, apart from publishing work on cross-border negotiation at Columbia Law School, and being an observer at the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law.

Co-Director Karen DeSoto, J.D., an assistant professor for NJCU’s Department of Political Science, also boasts an impressive resume, including a Juris Doctorate and Masters of Law in Trial Advocacy from Temple University’s Beasley School of Law.