Straus Institute Founder Discusses New

Master of Law

-by Wileen Wong

Pepperdine University recently announced its first post-graduate degree for lawyers-the Master of Laws (LL.M.)-in the rapidly emerging field of dispute resolution.

Pepperdine's Institute for Dispute Resolution, which was renamed the Straus Institute in 1996 after Leonard and Dorothy Straus, was founded by Dr. L. Randolph Lowry, director of the Institute and professor of law. In 1986, the Institute was the first program of its kind in the Southwest, offering a professional certificate and later the first master's degree in dispute resolution. But Lowry's vision was always that the Institute would one day offer the LL.M. degree. After seventeen years, the vision has become a reality as the program began in the spring 2003 semester.

"At the time when I started, Dean Ron Phillips told me he wanted to create a national reputation for the law school in this specialty area," Lowry said. "David Davenport and Ron Phillips had the vision to allow me to run with this program."

Twice, U.S. News & World Report has ranked the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution first among national law school dispute resolution programs. "It's always nice to be recognized by U.S. News & World Report, but what is more important is that we have the most comprehensive program, with the largest number of faculty from all over the world," Lowry stated. The number of classes available to students at Pepperdine has grown to twenty-eight, and there are twenty-five faculty

who teach each year. Many of the professors are full-time professional mediators, attorneys, and tenured faculty at other universities.

Intensive one- and two-week classes are also held during winter and summer breaks. Both the intensive classes and the regular courses focus on a balance between academic teaching and practical application, instructing students in theory as well as providing them with opportunities to refine their skills. Lowry knew Pepperdine's program had to be unique. "We're constantly competing against schools like Harvard, Georgetown, Stanford, and the University of Missouri," he explained. "We had to do something different, so we brought the theory out to the field and took the literature and made it practical. The students who come to Pepperdine learn how to practice the theory."

Adjunct Professor Jeffrey Kichaven believes that Pepperdine's method of teaching mediation distinguishes the University from other dispute resolution programs. "The program fully recognizes the appropriateness of lawyer participation in mediation as advocates and respects what lawyers have to contribute to the process," he said. "This allows the Straus Institute to have a greater practical impact."

The curriculum for the master's degree program, which is also open to non-lawyers, incorporates specialized courses such as dispute resolution in education, dispute resolution in religion, environmental and public policy dispute resolution, cross-cultural dispute resolution, and international commercial arbitration.

The Straus Institute also offers hundreds of continuing education programs across the country. The workshops are geared for mid-career professionals in the areas of mediation and arbitration, law, psychology, business, and human relations. These workshops allow participants work with professional mediators, improving their mediation skills with real-life anecdotes and situations.

In the last few years, invitations to the Visiting Faculty Scholars program were sent to Association of American Law School (AALS) members. So far, about thirty faculty from universities around the country, including Harvard, Tulane, Loyola Marymount, and Texas Tech, have come to Pepperdine to learn how to teach dispute resolution.

"It's a tremendous compliment that faculty members from other law schools-many that are more established than Pepperdine-would come here to study," Lowry said. "It's a tremendous way to expose faculty to what we're doing and how we're doing it."

Lowry, who holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from Pepperdine and a law degree from Hamline University School of Law, has been an active mediator for the past fifteen years. His experience ranges from the resolution of multimillion-dollar civil cases and public policy disputes

in the United States to the resolution of organizational conflict in Nairobi, Kenya.

"We're not just in the academic setting," he said. "We're out there doing it and teaching it. We've introduced dispute resolution and taken work to countries like Israel, Congo, Holland, Indonesia, Argentina, India, Hong Kong, China, and Canada."

The Institute engages in training partnerships with organizations all over the world. It has provided technical assistance and mediation training to neutrals from Argentina's leading for-profit dispute resolution provider. In 1996, the Asian Development Bank selected the Straus Institute to provide five weeks of on-site training and assist the Indian government in establishing dispute resolution centers in New Delhi, Bombay, and Hyderabad. The Institute also has conducted programs in Russia and Ghana.

In 1997, the Straus Institute completed a five-day mediation skills training session for a United States Information Agency project in a racially mixed village in Israel. Taught in Arabic, Hebrew, and English, the program brought together Arab and Jewish lawyers and community leaders from throughout the country.

In regards to the Institute's success so far, School of Law Dean Richardson Lynn said, "I am particularly pleased that the School of Law has developed to now offer its first graduate law degree. It is appropriate that the degree is in a field where the school has created an international reputation and provided substantial leadership to the legal profession. We anticipate an outstanding group of lawyers, from many countries, to be involved in the LL.M. in dispute resolution."

Lowry, who is one of the nation's leaders in the dispute resolution field, trains more than four thousand lawyers, judges, and managers in more than twenty-five states and several foreign countries each year. He is co-founder and president of the Southern California Mediation Association, and co-founder and board member of the Ventura Center for Dispute Settlement. He was a gubernatorial appointment to the California Dispute Resolution Advisory Council and recently was appointed by the Chief Justice of California to the Blue Ribbon Committee on Arbitration Ethics. "I always say, if you can't be first in your category, then pick a category you can be first in," said the Straus Institute director. "This initially was an experiment that worked out well. It was not difficult to move from offering the master's degree to offering the LL.M. It's a growing field and a developing field, and we've already produced a lot of successful mediators."