Professors Clare Keefe Coleman and Emily Zimmerman will present at the Southeast Regional legal Writing Conference at Stetson University in Gulfport, Fla. On April 22.

The duo will give a presentation on introducing first-year legal writing students to negotiation theory.

Their presentation, “Building Litigation Avoidance into a Traditional Litigation-Focused First-Year Writing Course,” is based on an exercise they and colleague Professor Deborah Gordon included in their Legal Writing courses.  First-year students who had just written a trial brief and were preparing for mock oral arguments were put in pairs of opposing counsel, given a list of secret facts and encouraged to negotiate using a variety of tools. 

The exercise introduces 1Ls to the critical use of negotiation to resolve conflicts, whether or not a case involves litigation.