Blog Archives
Professor French on COVID-19 Business Interruption Claims
July 14, 2020
Christopher French has posted to SSRN COVID-19 Business Interruption Insurance Loses: The Cases For and Against Coverage. The abstract provides: The financial consequences of the government-ordered shutdowns of businesses across America to mitigate the COVID-19 health crisis are enormous. Estimates indicate that small businesses have lost $255 to $431 billion per month and more than 44 million workers have been laid off. When businesses have requested reimbursement of their business...
July 14, 2020
Christopher French has posted to SSRN COVID-19 Business Interruption Insurance Loses: The Cases For and Against Coverage. The abstract provides: The financial consequences of the government-ordered shutdowns of businesses across America to mitigate the COVID-19 health crisis are enormous. Estimates indicate that small businesses have lost $255 to $431 billion per month and more than 44 million workers have been laid off. When businesses have requested reimbursement of their business...
Seven Keys to Unlock Mediation’s Golden Age
July 13, 2020
Mediate.com will be publishing a series of peer reviewed articles under the collective title Seven Keys to Unlock Mediation’s Golden Age. The objective of the Seven Keys is to encourage discussion among all stakeholders on navigating mediation’s best future. The seven keys are: Leadership, Data, Education, Profession, Technology, Government and Usage. The Seven Keys articles portray a variety of images and understandings of mediation. All recognize mediation’s extraordinary...
July 13, 2020
Mediate.com will be publishing a series of peer reviewed articles under the collective title Seven Keys to Unlock Mediation’s Golden Age. The objective of the Seven Keys is to encourage discussion among all stakeholders on navigating mediation’s best future. The seven keys are: Leadership, Data, Education, Profession, Technology, Government and Usage. The Seven Keys articles portray a variety of images and understandings of mediation. All recognize mediation’s extraordinary...
Pepperdine Receives $1 Million Gift for Dispute Resolution
July 12, 2020
The Honorable Daniel Weinstein (Ret.) has made a generous $1 million gift to the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution at the Pepperdine University Rick J. Caruso School of Law. The gift will be used to strengthen the academic program and global reputation of the Straus Institute, which has been ranked as the #1 dispute resolution program in the nation by U.S. News & World Report for 13 of the past 16 years. The gift will endow the managing director position...
July 12, 2020
The Honorable Daniel Weinstein (Ret.) has made a generous $1 million gift to the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution at the Pepperdine University Rick J. Caruso School of Law. The gift will be used to strengthen the academic program and global reputation of the Straus Institute, which has been ranked as the #1 dispute resolution program in the nation by U.S. News & World Report for 13 of the past 16 years. The gift will endow the managing director position...
Legal Analytics On The Rise: LexisNexis Reveals What’s Empowering Today’s Data-Driven Lawyers
July 11, 2020
The legal industry is at a tipping point when it comes to capitalizing on legal analytics to provide better and more efficient legal services. LexisNexis, a leading provider of legal analytics tools, recently commissioned the 2020 Legal Analytics Study, in partnership with ALM Intelligence, to explore the current use of legal analytics in the legal industry and the benefits it offers law firms. The study surveyed 163 large law firm professionals in December 2019 to uncover the industry’s...
July 11, 2020
The legal industry is at a tipping point when it comes to capitalizing on legal analytics to provide better and more efficient legal services. LexisNexis, a leading provider of legal analytics tools, recently commissioned the 2020 Legal Analytics Study, in partnership with ALM Intelligence, to explore the current use of legal analytics in the legal industry and the benefits it offers law firms. The study surveyed 163 large law firm professionals in December 2019 to uncover the industry’s...
Patent Litigation Is on the Rebound, Led by WD-Texas Filings
July 10, 2020
COVID-19 may have taken a big bite out of the economy, but it hasn’t slowed down patent infringement litigation. Fueled by nonpracticing entities, district court filings for the first half of 2020 were up 16% over the previous six months. Most of the upturn came during the second quarter, leading to some speculation that investor reallocation of capital to alternative investments such as litigation funding might be boosting the activity. And whereas Delaware led the way in 2019 with 28% of the 2019...
July 10, 2020
COVID-19 may have taken a big bite out of the economy, but it hasn’t slowed down patent infringement litigation. Fueled by nonpracticing entities, district court filings for the first half of 2020 were up 16% over the previous six months. Most of the upturn came during the second quarter, leading to some speculation that investor reallocation of capital to alternative investments such as litigation funding might be boosting the activity. And whereas Delaware led the way in 2019 with 28% of the 2019...
It’s Time For A New Trial Lawyer Narrative
July 9, 2020
For example, much of the expressed reluctance to move to remote advocacy is a fear that attorneys may miss many meaningful non-verbal cues we can only read in person. Upon what data are we relying? I have yet to see any evidence that backs up the notion that lawyers are good at this in general—and certainly none to say we are better at it than the general public. If we subject ourselves to our own “Daubert” analysis, do we have any true science to back up our claims? Do we have any special...
July 9, 2020
For example, much of the expressed reluctance to move to remote advocacy is a fear that attorneys may miss many meaningful non-verbal cues we can only read in person. Upon what data are we relying? I have yet to see any evidence that backs up the notion that lawyers are good at this in general—and certainly none to say we are better at it than the general public. If we subject ourselves to our own “Daubert” analysis, do we have any true science to back up our claims? Do we have any special...
“Behavioral Ethics, Deception, and Legal Negotiation” by Korobkin
July 8, 2020
Russel B. Korobkin (UCLA School of Law) has published "Behavioral Ethics, Deception, and Legal Negotiation" on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Research in the field of behavioral ethics finds that much unethical behavior is not the result of conscious amorality. Rather, cognitive and motivational biases enable and even encourage people who consider themselves to be pro-social to act badly without ever recognizing the shortcomings of their behavior. This Article, delivered as the annual...
July 8, 2020
Russel B. Korobkin (UCLA School of Law) has published "Behavioral Ethics, Deception, and Legal Negotiation" on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Research in the field of behavioral ethics finds that much unethical behavior is not the result of conscious amorality. Rather, cognitive and motivational biases enable and even encourage people who consider themselves to be pro-social to act badly without ever recognizing the shortcomings of their behavior. This Article, delivered as the annual...
People’s Desire To Reciprocate Acts Of Kindness Is Surprisingly Robust
July 7, 2020
Research has already established that there are four main forms of “reciprocity” that drive people to behave prosocially: wanting to do something nice for somebody who had been kind to you (direct reciprocity); doing good in the presence of people who might reward your generosity (reputational giving); paying it forward after experiencing kindness yourself (generalised reciprocity); or doing something for someone you’d seen be generous (rewarding reputation). But most of these motivations...
July 7, 2020
Research has already established that there are four main forms of “reciprocity” that drive people to behave prosocially: wanting to do something nice for somebody who had been kind to you (direct reciprocity); doing good in the presence of people who might reward your generosity (reputational giving); paying it forward after experiencing kindness yourself (generalised reciprocity); or doing something for someone you’d seen be generous (rewarding reputation). But most of these motivations...
State Court Corporate Cases Dip Amid COVID-19
July 6, 2020
State court caseloads dropped sharply when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and governments shut down in April and May, although the types of cases that tend to involve corporations saw smaller decreases, according to Lex Machina data released Thursday. Lex Machina found that civil case filings across nine court systems during the shutdown in states including California, Texas and Delaware plunged 53% in April and 49% in May from the same periods last year. But those changes were not uniform....
July 6, 2020
State court caseloads dropped sharply when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and governments shut down in April and May, although the types of cases that tend to involve corporations saw smaller decreases, according to Lex Machina data released Thursday. Lex Machina found that civil case filings across nine court systems during the shutdown in states including California, Texas and Delaware plunged 53% in April and 49% in May from the same periods last year. But those changes were not uniform....
Referees, “Home Field” Advantages, and “Empty” Stadiums: An Empirical Perspective
July 5, 2020
If current events continue as presently trajected we are likely to see a slew of professional (and D1 college) athletic games played in "empty" stadiums for some unknown period of time. For gamblers (and fans), one immediate question is how playing in an empty stadium may impact the outcome. One piece of emerging conventional wisdom--fueled by little more than intuition--is that the putative "home field advantage" attributable to (assumed) systematic referee "bias" favoring home teams may vanish...
July 5, 2020
If current events continue as presently trajected we are likely to see a slew of professional (and D1 college) athletic games played in "empty" stadiums for some unknown period of time. For gamblers (and fans), one immediate question is how playing in an empty stadium may impact the outcome. One piece of emerging conventional wisdom--fueled by little more than intuition--is that the putative "home field advantage" attributable to (assumed) systematic referee "bias" favoring home teams may vanish...
