Harold Abramson

He teaches or has taught courses on administrative law, anti-trust law, business organizations, contracts, dispute resolution methods including negotiations, mediation representation and international mediation, government regulation of business, remedies, domestic and international sales, and international business and trade. He also teaches online.

Professor Abramson has taught at other educational institutions. He has been teaching dispute resolution courses at Cardozo Law School since 2000. He visited as a full-time professor at Cardozo Law School (NYC), UNLV Law School (Las Vegas), and the US Air Force Academy (Colorado Springs). At UNLV, he is one of two senior ADR Scholars. At the AF Academy, he helped build its negotiations program including designing and teaching its first advanced negotiation course for the military context and formulating a training program for negotiation teachers.

He publishes extensively in the areas of negotiations, mediation, intercultural mediation, and mediation representation. For a list of his works-in-progress and publications, see Publications.

At Touro, Professor Abramson established the law school’s first summer abroad program at Russia’s premier university, Moscow State University. As an ABA Rule of Law (CEELI) Specialist in Russia in the 1990s, he worked on several law reform projects when Russia was trying to build a democracy. After leaving his vice dean position, he stayed involved in educational leadership roles by first serving for three years on the Committee for Professional Development (CLE for law professors) of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS). He now serves as a member of the twenty person AALS Resource Corps that facilitates retreats at U.S. law schools.

Prior to joining the Touro faculty, he worked in both private practice and state government for seven years. He first litigated contract disputes in a civil legal services office and then helped formulate business regulatory policies and litigated complex regulatory cases for a New York State agency.

Hal Abramson has been on the forefront of defining and developing the field of mediation representation by researching and formulating materials, publishing articles and a book (treatise), training lawyers, and teaching law students throughout the United States and abroad. He began focusing on mediation representation in January 1994 after teaching dispute resolution courses for more than seven years from the point of view of the neutral. Realizing that advocacy in mediation needed rigorous educational attention, he began researching mediation representation, developing teaching materials, and teaching the subject.

He published the first edition of his award-winning book, MEDIATION REPRESENTATION, in 2004 (the recipient of the annual Book Award of the CPR Institute of Dispute Resolution). The book has been adopted in over thirty-five law schools, including ones outside the U.S., and by NITA (National Institute for Trial Advocacy), the premier trainers of trial lawyers. NITA published the second edition in 2010. The third edition was published by Aspen in 2013. Oxford University Press published an edition designed specifically for lawyers outside of North America, and a Russian edition was published in 2013.

Since 2000, he has been regularly training students and litigators on how to effectively represent clients in mediation and has conducted programs throughout the U.S. including at Pepperdine Law School and abroad, in China, Hong Kong, Netherlands, Brazil, South Africa, and Switzerland, among other places. He also has been designing training programs, including serving as a consultant to NITA when it launched a national program and as a consultant to a large international insurance company that wanted to train its lawyers and claims professionals.

He also has been deeply involved in formulating mediation representation competitions for law students domestically and internationally. He served as Chair of the Committee for drafting the mediation representation competition rules for the ABA (American Bar Association) Section on Dispute Resolution (received ABA service award) and as a member of the inaugural drafting committee for the ICC's (International Chamber of Commerce) annual global mediation representation competition. He continues to serve as a judge and mediator in the ABA and ICC competitions.

Hal Abramson’s domestic and international neutral experiences include mediating, facilitating, and arbitrating business, organizational, and public policy disputes. He has mediated intellectual property disputes as well as disputes involving employment, partnership, service, licensing, purchase, distribution, and international business contracts. His international mediations have involved parties from Belgium, France, China, Columbia, Egypt, Guinea, India, Israel, Hong Kong, Lebanon, Russia, Slovenia, South Korea, and Venezuela. He has arbitrated business disputes, including professional disciplinary cases for seven years as a member of the New York State Board of Public Accountancy. He also has facilitated the feasibility stage of a negotiated rulemaking process and long-term planning processes at law schools.

He serves on various mediation and arbitration rosters including the rosters of the American Arbitration Association, National Academy of Distinguished Neutrals, Federal Eastern District Court of New York, CPR Institute for Dispute Resolution, International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), and CCPIT Mediation Center (Beijing). He also serves on the Law School Facilitation Panel of the Association of American Law Schools.

Hal Abramson has served actively on numerous local, national, and international dispute resolution committees, including the ADR Section of the NYS Bar Association (former chair), various committees for the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution, the Awards Committee of the CPR Institute for Dispute Resolution, and two Task Forces of IMI (International Mediation Institute) in The Hague.

After his visitorship at the U.S. Air Force Academy, he continues to serve as a negotiation advisor working on projects at the Air Force Academy, the AF General Counsel’s Office, and the Air Force Negotiation Center at Maxwell AF Base.

He also served on the planning committee of the ABA-UNCITRAL Asian-Pacific International Mediation Summit 2015, in Delhi, including chairing the sub-committee on post-Summit Initiatives. He assisted FEMA in designing a system for resolving disaster relief claims after Sandy Storm. And, he served as Chair of the IMI (International Mediation Institute) Task Force on intercultural mediations. This international Task Force formulated the first ever Intercultural Mediator Certification Program and designed and conducted pilot training programs in Paris, Brisbane, and Singapore. See more here.

Professor Abramson's most recent professional activities included serving as the first Scholar in (virtual) Residence of the International Academy of Mediators (IAM). He designed this new program and served as the first rotating scholar with this professional association of private, full-time mediators. He also represented IMI and IAM at the UN-UNCITRAL Working Group II meetings on drafting the new Singapore Mediation Convention on compliance with mediated settlement agreements. In addition, he served as an expert consultant for UNCITRAL during the drafting process when he designed and conducted three mediation educational programs for the delegates. After approval by the General Assembly, he co-chaired the first conference on the new treaty that included many of the UN Delegates that helped draft the treaty and then edited a book based on the contributions from the conference. He currently serves as an advisor to the Uniform Law Commission’s committee that is developing recommendations to the U.S. State Department and U.S. Senate on ratification of the Convention.

Trainings and Lectures

Hal Abramson has lectured widely and conducted numerous training programs on domestic and cross-cultural negotiations and mediations, domestic and international arbitration, public policy negotiations, and representing clients in mediations. He has lectured and conducted training programs throughout the United States as well as in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Italy, India, Israel, the Netherlands, Russia, Scotland, Singapore, South Africa, Switzerland, and Turkey.

Publications

WORK-IN-PROGRESS

New research-Negotiating When Little Time and Little Trust: Lessons from and for the Military (based on year visiting at the U.S. Air Force Academy.)