Menu
Cognitive
7 Ways to Capture Someone’s Attention
April 2, 2015
Your long-term success depends on winning the attention of others. If your boss doesn’t notice your work, how will you get a promotion? If your team doesn’t listen to you, how can you lead effectively? And if you can’t capture the attention of clients, how does your business or career survive? “Attention is the most important currency that anybody can give you,” Steve Rubel of Edelman once told me. “It’s worth more than money, possessions or things.” But very few people know...
April 2, 2015
Your long-term success depends on winning the attention of others. If your boss doesn’t notice your work, how will you get a promotion? If your team doesn’t listen to you, how can you lead effectively? And if you can’t capture the attention of clients, how does your business or career survive? “Attention is the most important currency that anybody can give you,” Steve Rubel of Edelman once told me. “It’s worth more than money, possessions or things.” But very few people know...
Learning to See Data
March 29, 2015
FOR the past year or so genetic scientists at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York have been collaborating with a specialist from another universe: Daniel Kohn, a Brooklyn-based painter and conceptual artist. Mr. Kohn has no training in computers or genetics, and he’s not there to conduct art therapy classes. His role is to help the scientists with a signature 21st-century problem: Big Data overload. Advanced computing produces waves of abstract digital data that in many cases...
March 29, 2015
FOR the past year or so genetic scientists at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York have been collaborating with a specialist from another universe: Daniel Kohn, a Brooklyn-based painter and conceptual artist. Mr. Kohn has no training in computers or genetics, and he’s not there to conduct art therapy classes. His role is to help the scientists with a signature 21st-century problem: Big Data overload. Advanced computing produces waves of abstract digital data that in many cases...
How To Open Up People’s Minds to Change
March 12, 2015
Now, research has found that focusing on values that are personally important — such as helping a family member — can help people act on advice they might otherwise find too threatening. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, scanned people’s brains as they were given typical advice about exercise you might get from any doctor (Falk et al., 2015). Before receiving the advice, though, some were led through a self-affirmation exercise, which simply involves...
March 12, 2015
Now, research has found that focusing on values that are personally important — such as helping a family member — can help people act on advice they might otherwise find too threatening. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, scanned people’s brains as they were given typical advice about exercise you might get from any doctor (Falk et al., 2015). Before receiving the advice, though, some were led through a self-affirmation exercise, which simply involves...
Drobac & Goodenough on Consent
March 11, 2015
Jennifer Ann Drobac and Oliver R. Goodenough (Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law and Vermont Law School) have posted Exposing the Myth of Consent (Indiana Health Law Review, 2015, Forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Consent, a critical concept for law, often rests upon the ability of people to create binding changes of legal status, rights, and obligations. The law typically presumes complete and un-buffered adult capacity for binding legal consent. However, the realities...
March 11, 2015
Jennifer Ann Drobac and Oliver R. Goodenough (Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law and Vermont Law School) have posted Exposing the Myth of Consent (Indiana Health Law Review, 2015, Forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Consent, a critical concept for law, often rests upon the ability of people to create binding changes of legal status, rights, and obligations. The law typically presumes complete and un-buffered adult capacity for binding legal consent. However, the realities...
How Anchoring Can Influence Judges And Other Cognitive Biases
March 10, 2015
I recently got around to reading a whopper of an old law review article that I had been wanting to read for awhile entitled, “Inside the Judicial Mind.” It’s an overview and research study on the cognitive biases that we all face, but in the context of how judges — theoretically some of the most neutral people — fare with them when they are the subject matter of the study. Are judges really able to do better than everyone else and minimize their biases? From the introduction: [W]e...
March 10, 2015
I recently got around to reading a whopper of an old law review article that I had been wanting to read for awhile entitled, “Inside the Judicial Mind.” It’s an overview and research study on the cognitive biases that we all face, but in the context of how judges — theoretically some of the most neutral people — fare with them when they are the subject matter of the study. Are judges really able to do better than everyone else and minimize their biases? From the introduction: [W]e...
Is Conflict Like Driving?
March 9, 2015
Recently, the Kluwer Mediation Blog posted an interesting discussion about the cognitive biases at play during a dispute. What caught my interest is that the author- Charlie Irvine- used the example of driving to make his point. In his blog entitled, “What Mediators Know (Or Can’t Help Noticing) about Conflict” he discusses the cognitive bias known as the “fundamental attribution error”. This bias means that when we want to give a reason for another person’s behavior, we tend to claim...
March 9, 2015
Recently, the Kluwer Mediation Blog posted an interesting discussion about the cognitive biases at play during a dispute. What caught my interest is that the author- Charlie Irvine- used the example of driving to make his point. In his blog entitled, “What Mediators Know (Or Can’t Help Noticing) about Conflict” he discusses the cognitive bias known as the “fundamental attribution error”. This bias means that when we want to give a reason for another person’s behavior, we tend to claim...
LegalAnalyticsCourse.com — Now Online (but still in beta)
March 6, 2015
This intro class is designed to train students to efficiently manage, collect, explore, analyze, and communicate in a legal profession that is increasingly being driven by data. Our goal is to imbue our students with the capability to understand the process of extracting actionable knowledge from data, to distinguish themselves in legal proceedings involving data or analysis, and assist in firm and in-house management, including billing, case forecasting, process improvement, resource management,...
March 6, 2015
This intro class is designed to train students to efficiently manage, collect, explore, analyze, and communicate in a legal profession that is increasingly being driven by data. Our goal is to imbue our students with the capability to understand the process of extracting actionable knowledge from data, to distinguish themselves in legal proceedings involving data or analysis, and assist in firm and in-house management, including billing, case forecasting, process improvement, resource management,...
Benefit vs. Purpose
March 5, 2015
I read a blog on the Program on Negotiation Harvard Law School’s website entitled “Dealing with Difficult People and Negotiation: When Should You Give up the Fight” It notes that in every dispute lies the danger of irrational escalation. The parties simply to do not know when to “give up the ghost.” The blog then notes three reasons why such irrational escalation occurs; “Fixating on Fairness”. A party wants a “fair” outcome (however the party defines “fairness”). What a plaintiff...
March 5, 2015
I read a blog on the Program on Negotiation Harvard Law School’s website entitled “Dealing with Difficult People and Negotiation: When Should You Give up the Fight” It notes that in every dispute lies the danger of irrational escalation. The parties simply to do not know when to “give up the ghost.” The blog then notes three reasons why such irrational escalation occurs; “Fixating on Fairness”. A party wants a “fair” outcome (however the party defines “fairness”). What a plaintiff...
It is All in Your Perspective!
March 4, 2015
The December 2014 edition of The Atlantic contains an interesting article entitled “The Real Roots of Midlife Crisis”...
March 4, 2015
The December 2014 edition of The Atlantic contains an interesting article entitled “The Real Roots of Midlife Crisis”...
Legal Analytics – Introduction to the Course – Katz + Bommarito
March 2, 2015
Here is an introductory slide deck from “Legal Analytics” which is a course that Mike Bommarito and I are teaching this semester. Relevant legal applications include predictive coding in e-discovery (i.e. classification), early case assessment and overall case prediction, pricing and staff forecasting, prediction of judicial behavior, etc. As I have written in my recent article in Emory Law Journal – we are moving into an era of data driven law practice. This course is a direct response...
March 2, 2015
Here is an introductory slide deck from “Legal Analytics” which is a course that Mike Bommarito and I are teaching this semester. Relevant legal applications include predictive coding in e-discovery (i.e. classification), early case assessment and overall case prediction, pricing and staff forecasting, prediction of judicial behavior, etc. As I have written in my recent article in Emory Law Journal – we are moving into an era of data driven law practice. This course is a direct response...
