HNMCP Project Criteria

Potential Projects

HNMCP’s vision of negotiation and dispute resolution is broad.  Some sample project ideas include the following:

• Helping to develop a strategy to facilitate stakeholder discussions of important but potentially contentious issues
  
  
• Devising a negotiation strategy to mobilize community members towards some sort of social change
  
  
• Conducting a conflict assessment that will closely examine the particulars of a nuanced dispute: the various parties, their interests, possible strategies and potential barriers
  
  
• Formulating an internal dispute resolution system to help your employees better manage and resolve workplace dispute

Projects must fit into the time constraints of either the fall or spring semester at HLS (both approximately three months long), and must have a partner supervisor assigned to work with the students.

Some projects are likely to last longer than three months to complete.  For all such situations, it makes sense to consider either whether the project can be broken into discrete three-month segments that successive groups of students can work on over the course of several semesters, or whether the Harvard Negotiators might be a more appropriate partner organization for this project.  The Harvard Negotiators are a volunteer student group aiming to furnish real-life practice opportunities to current students at Harvard Law School.  For more information on contacting the Negotiators, please see their website.

Before the beginning of the semester, partner organizations and HNMCP work to devise a project plan, clarifying the preliminary timeframe for the project and any work products that will be required of the students.  Once the semester begins, students are presented with the work plan for each project and asked to rank each project based on their personal interests.  HNMCP then assigns students to projects with these preferences in mind.

If you have any questions about the projects or the HNMCP program, please feel free to contact us at HNMCP@law.harvard.edu.