The Art of Impasse-Breaking in Mediation: A Handbook for Mediators, Lawyers, and Other Conflict Resolvers

David Hoffman's The Art of Impasse-Breaking in Mediation provides hands-on guidance for lawyers and mediators seeking to overcome roadblocks to settlement - a comprehensive manual that describes more than 50 tools that mediators use and why they work. As Harvard Lecturer on Law and past chair of the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution, Hoffman draws on more than thirty years of mediating family, business, employment cases and twenty years of teaching mediation in this invaluable guide.

Beginning with tools for preventing impasse, this manual offers guidance on both the do's and the don'ts of closing deals in mediation, with insights drawn from social psychology, game theory, and the Internal Family Systems model. Lawyers, mediators, and other dispute resolvers will find particular value in the numerous vignettes and case studies drawn from Hoffman's experience as a mediator, as well as checklists, forms, and practice tips. The book concludes with suggestions for bringing mediation cases not just to closure but to transformative resolutions that are fair, efficient, stable, and wise.

David A. Hoffman is the John H. Watson Jr. Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, where he teaches three courses: Mediation, Diversity and Dispute Resolution, and Legal Profession: Collaborative Law. David is also an attorney, mediator, arbitrator, and founding member of Boston Law Collaborative, LLC, where he handles cases involving family, business, employment, and other disputes. Prior to founding Boston Law Collaborative in 2003, David was a litigation partner at the Boston firm Hill, Barlow, where he practiced for 17 years.

David is past chair of the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolution. He is also a Distinguished Fellow of the International Academy of Mediators and has won lifetime achievement awards from the Academy of Professional Family Mediators and the American College of Civil Trial Mediators. David has published three books on conflict resolution (including Bringing Peace into the Room with co editor Daniel Bowling) and more than 100 articles on topics related to law and mediation.

David is a graduate of Princeton University (BA summa cum laude, 1970), Cornell University (MA 1974, American Studies), and Harvard Law School (JD, magna cum laude, 1984), where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. After law school, he served as a law clerk for Hon. Stephen G. Breyer, at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. David and his wife, Leslie Warner, live in a cohousing community in Acton, Massachusetts. Between them, they have five adult children, an adolescent cat, and a rescue Golden Retriever from Serbia.