Recently, I found myself in Brazil delivering a talk to a group of Brazilian executives on the virtues of alternative dispute resolution (ADR). Later that night, I spoke to a small group of law students at the University of São Paolo, also on the subject of ADR. My hosts were some of the leaders of the nascent ADR movement in Brazil, and they taught me a great deal.
As someone who has been deeply immersed in the growth and development of ADR in the U.S. and, to a lesser extent, in the rest of the world, it was fascinating for me to see a society and a legal system at an earlier stage of its response to the need for alternative and better means of resolving disputes.
