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Penn Law’s Douglas N. Frenkel receives prestigious award for his scholarship

February 26, 2014

Douglas N. Frenkel
Douglas N. Frenkel
An article written by Penn Law Professor Douglas N. Frenkel L’72 has been selected as the outstanding scholarly article of 2013 by the International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution.

An article written by Penn Law Professor Douglas N. Frenkel L’72 has been selected as the outstanding scholarly article of 2013 by the International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution (CPR). The award was announced on February 21 at the Institute’s annual meeting.

Frenkel, the Morris Shuster Practice Professor of Law, is one of the nation’s foremost mediation experts. His multimedia book, The Practice of Mediation: A Video-Integrated Text (with James Stark) is the leading law school skills text in the field and the first work of its kind to integrate text and video.

Frenkel’s award-winning article “Changing Minds: The Work of Mediators and Empirical Studies of Persuasion,” also written with Stark, a professor at the University of Connecticut School of Law, was published last year in the Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution.

The article, which has drawn considerable attention in the dispute resolution field, surveys social science research on persuasive messaging in disciplines ranging from disease prevention, to politics and advertising, to race relations, and then attempts to apply evidence-based lessons to what might be effective in mediation.

In addition to being cited in academic sources, a condensed version of the 90-page paper was published last year in a two-part series in the American Bar Association’s Dispute Resolution Magazine.

In addition to his scholarship, Frenkel directs Penn’s Mediation Clinic and frequently serves as a mediator in employment, commercial, educational, and family matters. He is also the architect of Penn Law’s nationally renowned clinical program, the Gittis Center for Clinical Legal Studies, which he directed from 1980 to 2008. He serves as a consultant to law schools around the world on clinical program design and to lawyers in the U.S. on questions of legal ethics.

Of the CPR award, Frenkel said, “This kind of recognition is extremely rewarding to receive. I’m grateful for Penn’s support in allowing my career to evolve as it has.”

CPR, an organization of executives and counsel from the world’s largest companies and global law firms, government officials, retired judges, highly-experienced neutrals, and academics, was founded in 1979 and has been at the forefront of the growth and development of dispute resolution practice and policy ever since. The jury for the annual award is comprised of leading academics and practitioners.