Rick Bales
Rick Bales is a professor of law at Ohio Northern University Law School, where he teaches Torts, Civil Procedure, and a wide variety of labor/employment and dispute resolution courses.
Professor Bales is a Member of the American Law Institute, the American Bar Foundation, the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers, the Labor Law Group, and the National Academy of Arbitrators. He is a Peer Reviewer for Cambridge University Press and Relations Industrielles / Industrial Relations Review. He is a frequent Site Inspector for the American Bar Association’s accreditation of U.S. law schools, and is an active member of the ABA Competitions Committee where he helps run several student skills competitions. He has provided advocacy or dispute resolution training throughout the world, including Fulbrights in Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta, dispute resolution training for labor advocates in Myanmar, and frequent presentations at universities in Vietnam, Cambodia, and throughout Europe.
Professor Bales has published more than 100 scholarly articles and authored or co-authored 10 books. His books, many of which have gone to multiple editions, include Cambridge Handbook of US Labor Law: Reinventing Labor Law for the 21st Century (Cambridge University Press 2020, co-authored with Charlotte Garden) and Arbitration Law (West Publishing, co-authored with Katherine Stone and Alexander Colvin). His most recent journal articles focus on artificial intelligence in the workplace and on COVID-related labor arbitration awards in the U.S. and Canada.
In addition to teaching and writing, Professor Bales serves part-time as a labor arbitrator, deciding disputes between employers and labor unions. He serves on arbitration panels for the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, American Arbitration Association, and State Employment Relation Board (Ohio). He also has served occasionally as a mediator or arbitrator for commercial disputes.