Past Events

Date: Thursday, February 5, 2026

Time: 4:30pm to 6:00pm PST

Attendance Options: 

• Santa Clara School of Law 
• Stanford Law School
• Remotely via Zoom

This event is free to attend, Registration Required

Sarah Rudolph Cole is the Michael E. Moritz Chair in Alternative Dispute Resolution at Ohio State University. 

A nationally prominent expert on alternative dispute resolution, Professor Cole researches and writes about legal and policy issues that arise because of the increased use of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) in the justice system, particularly arbitration and mediation. Her scholarship has been published in journals including the Washington University Law Review, the UC Davis Law Review, and the Georgia Law Review. She is also co-author of Mediation: Law, Policy and Practice, the leading treatise in mediation, and of Dispute Resolution: Negotiation, Mediation and Other Processes, one of the country's leading dispute resolution casebooks. She is also a co-author of Discussions in Dispute Resolution: The Foundational Articles. 

Colin Rule is President and CEO of ODR.com/Mediate.com, acquired by the American Arbitration Association/International Centre for Dispute Resolution in May 2024. From 2003 to 2011 Colin was Director of ODR for eBay and PayPal.

Colin has worked in the dispute resolution field for 30 years as a mediator, trainer, and consultant. He is currently Co-Chair of the Advisory Board at the National Center for Technology and Dispute Resolution at UMass-Amherst, a Non-Resident Fellow at the Gould Center for Conflict Resolution at Stanford Law School, and Practitioner-in-Residence at Texas A&M School of Law.

Dr. Megan Ma is the Executive Director of the Stanford Legal Innovation through Frontier Technology Lab (liftlab). Her research focuses on the use and integration of generative AI in legal applications and the translation of legal knowledge to code, considering their implications in contexts of human-machine collaboration. Her particular focus is on questions of legal education and the future of practice in light of new technological developments. She also teaches courses in computational law at the Law School and Department of Computer Science.

Date: Tuesday, September 30, 2025

Time: 5:00pm to 7:00pm

Place: 
Santa Clara University School of Law
El Camino Real
Santa Clara, CA 95050

This event is free to attend, Registration Required

Judge Kirwan recently retired in April 2024 after serving 18 years on the Santa Clara County Superior Court Bench. His assignments included civil trials, civil case management, law and motion, writs and injunctive relief and complex litigation, in addition to serving as Supervising Judge of the Court's Civil Division between 2012-2014. Prior to being appointed to the Bench, he spent 15 years as a civil litigator at Hoge, Fenton, Jones and Appel and 4 years at Needham, Davis, Kirwan and Young, a litigation firm he co-founded with his partners. He has been an active member of the American Inns of Court for over thirty years and currently serves on the Board of Governor's for the Association of Business Trial Lawyers. Judge Kirwan has also served as an adjunct professor for the past 16 years at Santa Clara Law teaching mediation theory and recently an experiential program where students mediate small claims disputes. In addition to serving on a variety of continuing education panels over the past 18 years, he also served on the CJER faculty teaching fellow judges in areas of civil litigation. Judge Kirwan currently provides mediation and arbitration services at Signature Resolution.

Tamara Lopez, Esq. is a full time neutral after a seasoned career as an independent mediator, Judge Pro Tem and government litigator. As a neutral, Ms. Lopez utilizes her breadth of legal experience along with personal traits that have made her so successful- intelligence, sound judgment, practicality, diligence and persuasiveness. Her ability to communicate on a sophisticated level both intellectually and emotionally, aids counsel and the parties in resolving their disputes. Tamara currently provides services as neutral at JAMS.

Adriana is a practicing civil litigation attorney and private mediator with over 25 years of experience in identifying, evaluating and resolving conflict for individuals, private companies and small businesses. Her broad range of litigation experience in business, corporate, real estate, and employment matters have resulted in her skilled assessment, evaluation and resolution of a variety of disputes, both large and small. These skills have been further honed in her mediation practice and ADR volunteer work with multiple courts in the Bay Area. She is particularly skilled at facilitating communications between parties with complex goals and varied temperaments. She enjoys helping them navigate difficult issues and creatively resolve conflicts. She has worked with prominent firms and founded two general practice firms. Ms. Moore received her B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis, Mo. and her J.D. from University of Texas School of Law in Austin. She enjoys teaching critical lawyering skills as an adjunct at Santa Clara School of Law.

Laurie Mikkelsen is Santa Clara County Superior Court’s ADR Administrator and Civil Attorney-Mediator, overseeing the Court’s Civil, Probate, Unlawful Detainer, Small Claims, Civil Harassment, and Elder Abuse ADR programs and 80 volunteer settlement attorneys, and personally conducting settlement conferences and mediations for those cases. Prior to becoming a neutral, Laurie was an environmental, land use, and water law litigator, until her work on the Quantification Settlement Agreement consolidated cases convinced her there had to be a better alternative. She has taught mediation at Santa Clara University School of Law, been a Trustee and Secretary on the Santa Clara County Bar Association, and keeps her toes in the environmental realm as a member of the San Lorenzo Valley Water District’s Environmental Committee. She graduated magna cum laude from the law school formerly known as Hastings.

Leor Chechik leads the executive functions of the Conflict Resolution Program at Santa Clara University School of Law. She recently graduated from Santa Clara Law where she helped to start the Bates Mediation Clinic allowing our students mediate small claims cases for unrepresented litigants. Prior to law school, Leor had an accomplished career in tech, where in addition to being an engineer she also engaged in conflict prevention and resolution work, and she continues providing career coaching.

Cal. Rules of Court, rule 3.855: Impartiality, disclosures, conflict management

Cal. Rules of Court, rule 3.857: Procedural fairness, roles, dual ADR, termination

Cal. Evid. Code §§ 1115–1129: Rules governing mediator confidentiality