The Client Counseling, Negotiation, and Mediation Advocacy in Divorce Disputes file helps students understand the advocacy, coaching, and supportive role when clients are in negotiation and mediation during out-of-court settlement discussions and how to counsel clients during these processes. The parenting plan and business valuation disputes can be negotiated and mediated separately or together; each will challenge the learner’s counseling, problem solving, and representational skills.
Allen v. Allen describes the legal, emotional, and economic challenges a family of four faces during a divorce. The parents, Lynne and David Allen, each seek decision-making authority and primary residence of their two adolescent children, while also disputing the valuation and division of their marital assets. They have agreed to negotiate their disputes or have been ordered by the court to mediate them.
This case file contains court files, stipulations for negotiation and mediation, an agreement to mediate, a legal research file pertaining to the parenting dispute, and counsel’s files for each party in the parenting and financial disputes. The problems at the end of the file ask the learner to represent the parties at a pre-negotiation or mediation counseling session, a settlement negotiation between the lawyers alone, and the mediation itself. Comprehensive teaching notes bring instructors quickly up to speed on the pedagogical goals of the case file.
In 2019, the Allen v. Allen range expanded to include a Deposition (Faculty, Petitioner, and Respondent) version, along with a complete revision of the original Trial file.