On this week’s episode of the Touro Law Review Podcast, we are joined by Professor Michelle Zakarin who interviews Professor Hal Abramson. The theme of this podcast episode is the importance of embracing professional opportunities. Professor Abramson highlights several fascinating opportunities early in his career as the podcast tracks his legal career to today. Specifically, Professor Abramson discusses the opportunity early in his career to file three Amicus Briefs before the United States Supreme Court and the opportunities during the 1970s energy crisis that led him to testifying in Congress and meetings with senior public officials at the Carter White House. He also discusses some of his initiatives in Russia when Russia was trying to build a democracy and considers his recent work at the UN on helping to draft a treaty. And, of course, he recalls what triggered his interest in professionally engaging in and publishing in the fields of negotiations and mediation.
Keep a look out for Professor Abramson’s most recent article that he co-authored with Brig. Gen Letendre, US Air Force Academy, “Negotiating Social Change: The Back Story on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
Brought to you by the Touro Law Review.
Our guest today is Professor Harold (Hal) Abramson.
Professor Hal Abramson
Professor Abramson is a full-time faculty member at Touro Law Center, where he has taught, trained, arbitrated, mediated, and published articles and books on negotiations, mediation, mediation advocacy, and intercultural and international disputes for more than thirty years. Additionally, Professor Abramson taught and trained at the U.S. Air Force Academy as a Distinguished Visiting Professor, where he developed their negotiation program. He also taught as a full-time visitor at Cardozo Law in New York City and UNLV Law (Las Vegas.)
Professor Abramson is an award-winning author and has published extensively, including the leading treatise on representing clients in mediation entitled Mediation Representation – Advocating as a Problem Solver, which received the annual book award of the CPR Institute for Dispute Resolution. He recently received the Touro University Presidential Award for Scholarship in 2020.
At Touro, Professor Abramson served for 9 years as vice dean responsible for academic programs, faculty development, and international programs, and also served as Acting Dean. Additionally, he established the law school’s first summer abroad program at Russia’s premier university, Moscow State University. While also in Russia, he served as an ABA Rule of Law Russian Specialist when he worked on two reform projects during Russia’s chaotic effort to build a democracy in the 1990s.
Throughout his career, Professor Abramson has engaged in a wide range of dispute resolution initiatives, including serving as the Chair of the ABA Committee that drafted the mediation representation rules for its national competition and served as a member of the inaugural committee that launched the International Chamber of Commerce’s global mediation competition in Paris. After Hurricane Sandy in 2012, he assisted FEMA in designing a system for resolving disaster relief claims. Recently, he worked at the United Nations when representing two NGOs and assisting the US State Department during the three years that the UN drafted a treaty on enforcing cross-broader mediated settlement agreements.
Professor Michelle Zakarin
Professor Zakarin has been a Legal Process (first-year legal writing and research course) at Touro Law Center since 2003. In addition, Professor Zakarin proposed, developed and teaches a Cybercrime course. Her interest and undergraduate degree in computer science sparked her desire to create this Cybercrime elective course. Professor Zakarin has appeared on the Touro Law Radio show and as a guest and moderator on the Touro Law Review podcast.
In addition to her dedication to Touro Law Center, she authored a book chapter, Millennial Leadership in Law School. Her chapter is entitled The Importance of Feedback and she discusses the use of technology to provide meaningful feedback to students. Her latest article is Requiring What’s Not Required: Circuit Courts Are Disregarding Supreme Court Precedent and Revisiting Officer Inadvertence in Cyberlaw Cases. It explores the way courts treat officer inadvertence as a requirement despite the United States Supreme Court ruling no longer requiring it in plain view searches. It has been published in the Winter 2022 edition of the Charleston Law Review.
Professor Zakarin is currently authoring a legal writing textbook using Open Education Resources (OER) that will be hosted on an online platform, rather than published in a traditional hardcopy format. She has received the American Legal Writing Directors (ALWD) Teaching Grant for 2022-2023 to continue her work in this area and has presented this topic for the American Association of Law Schools (AALS), where she introduced her work to fellow law professors and administrators.
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