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James Coben
jcoben@gw.hamline.edu
Phone: 651 523-2137
Associate Professor
Director, Dispute Resolution Institute
B.A., Williams College
J.D., Northeastern University School of Law

"Commitment to the interests of clients is not only about zealous advocacy on their behalf. Sometimes the best advocacy is not fighting at all. Successful lawyers of the 21st century will be leaders in creative dispute resolution."

Professor Coben directs the Dispute Resolution Institute (DRI) at Hamline University School of Law and teaches civil procedure, dispute resolution practices, mediation, and negotiation.  He manages three Hamline ADR Summer Study Abroad programs – an international commercial arbitration program in London, an international business transactions negotiation program in Rome, and a program in democratic dialogue and mediation in Budapest.  He also helped create the Tri-Continental LL.M. program for Indian Lawyers and teaches ADR courses in India.  In 2003, Professor Coben authored a successful proposal to the European Union and U.S. Department of Education to fund the EC-US ADR Fellows Program, which promotes transatlantic student mobility and development of transnational ADR curriculum; he serves as project director for the four-year effort, which also involves two American and three European university partners. 

During the last decade, Professor Coben has pioneered a variety of innovative ADR clinical opportunities for Hamline students, including mediation advocacy on behalf of clients in employment and family law cases. He has published numerous ADR related articles and currently is the domestic mediation editor for the World Arbitration & Mediation Report, and is co-authoring the third edition of Mediation:  Law Policy & Practice (West Group, forthcoming late 2007).  He previously served on the editorial board and as ethics columnist for the Journal of Alternative Dispute Resolution in Employment.  Together with Professor Peter N. Thompson, he has created the Mediation Case Law Project – a systematic attempt to catalogue litigation trends about mediation, as well as produce and distribute innovative teaching videos, and other resources to ADR academics, practitioners, and trainers. 

Professor Coben has made over 100 presentations on ADR topics at conferences and continuing education events in the U.S. and abroad.  Between 1999 and 2005, Professor Coben was a member of the Minnesota Supreme Court's ADR Review Board, charged with regulating the performance of court‑appointed neutrals.  He also is a past chair of the ADR Section of the Association of American Law Schools ("AALS"), and has twice co-chaired the annual Legal Educator's Colloquium sponsored by AALS and the American Bar Association (ABA) Dispute Resolution Section.  He currently serves as chair of the section's Lawyer as Problem-Solver Committee and also is a member of the section's Ethics Committee.   Prior to joining the Hamline faculty, Professor Coben served as law clerk to U.S. District Court Judge Robert Renner, Jr. in St. Paul.