In addition to the full-time law faculty at the University of Missouri School of Law who comprise the core of the Center for the Study of Dispute Resolution, a number of Senior Fellows at other institutions and locations with special ties to Mizzou Law contribute to the work of the Center. With expertise and experience in the field, Senior Fellows advise in furthering the Center’s mission and activities, teach our online courses, and collaborate on timely projects.
Leonard L. Riskin is C.A. Leedy Professor Emeritus of Law, Isidor Loeb Professor Emeritus of Law, and the founding director of the Center for the Study of Dispute Resolution at the University of Missouri. Under his leadership and direction, Mizzou Law became the first law school in the country to integrate dispute resolution into doctrinal law courses and to offer an LLM in Dispute Resolution degree program, now in its 25th year. CSDR leadership continues to seek Professor Riskin’s counsel on various aspects of the Center’s mission, including curriculum, pedagogy, training, and faculty scholarship. Currently, he is a visiting professor of dispute resolution at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law.
A leading figure in the dispute resolution field and a prolific author, Professor Riskin has published seminal works on negotiation, mediation, and mindfulness and the law. His latest is Managing Conflict Mindfully: Don’t Believe Everything You Think (West 2023).
Donna Pavlick, ’00, is a member of the very first graduating class of the LLM in Dispute Resolution program at the University of Missouri. Thereafter, she received her PhD in educational leadership and policy analysis, also at Mizzou. Dr. Pavlick returns to Columbia after more than 20 years in law school administration, having served as assistant dean at the University of Missouri and Vanderbilt University Law Schools and associate dean at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. As Senior Fellow, she oversees activities relating to outreach and engagement of LLM alumni and students.
In addition to her career in the legal academy, Dr. Pavlick has served as a community mediator in family and civil disputes, and recently marked fifteen years as a Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) arbitrator. Before attending law school, she served as a physical therapist in the U.S. Navy, retiring from the Navy Reserves after a 30-year career.
Imre Stephen Szalai is the Judge John D. Wessel Distinguished Professor of Social Justice at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law. He has served as an arbitrator in dozens of cases and authored books, book chapters, and several articles that focus on the development of arbitration law and practice. Professor Szalai has also appeared or been quoted for his arbitration expertise in national and international media, including CNN, The Economist, Forbes, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, NBC News, National Public Radio, and Bloomberg Radio. He teaches the LLM Arbitration Seminar course for Missouri’s Online LLM in Dispute Resolution program and has supervised several students with their independent study projects.
Professor Szalai received his undergraduate degree from Yale University, with a double major in economics and classical civilizations, and his law degree from Columbia University, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar.