Biography

ivian Berger is the Nash Professor of Law Emerita at Columbia University School of Law. She devotes the bulk of her professional time to ADR – mainly, mediation and mainly in the employment area, handling discrimination, contract and wages and hours claims. She has presided over hundreds of mediations and been designated an Advanced Practitioner in employment mediation by the Association for Conflict Resolution. She has taken numerous advanced trainings relevant to employment mediation, as well as basic mediation trainings at Harvard Law School and CDR Associates; coached mediators in training; and spoken on mediation-related topics.

Professor Berger is on the AAA Employment Mediation Panel and on the mediator panels of the US District Courts for both the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York and the New Jersey State court system, for which she handles mainly employment disputes. In the employment area, she also mediates for the EEOC (both federal agency and non-federal agency cases) and has mediated for the United States Postal Service (the "REDRESS" program) and the NYS Division of Human Rights. She mediates privately as well, and has served as a special master in a sexual harassment case in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

In addition, she mediates in a number of other fields, including: PINS and child custody cases, citizen-police complaints, and disciplinary complaints against lawyers.

Professor Berger is a member of the NYS Unified Court System ADR Advisory Committee and served for four years on the ADR Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York; in addition, she is a member of the Arbitration and Alternative Dispute Resolution Committee of the NY County Lawyers' Ass'n.

Professor Berger also publishes in the field: e.g., "`It Ain't Over Till It's Over': Fashioning Durable Settlements," 27 Alternatives to the High Cost of Litig. 49 (Mar. 2009); "Summary Judgment Benchmarks For Settling Employment Discrimination Lawsuits” (with Michael O. Finkelstein and Kenneth Cheung), 23 Hofstra Lab. & Emp. LJ 45 (2005); "Employment Mediation in the Twenty-First Century: Challenges in a Changing Environment," 5 U. Pa. J. Lab. & Emp. L. 487 (2003); and "The Virtues of Mediation," Nat'l L.J., May 12, 2003, at 35.

Professor Berger has done criminal and civil litigation in state and federal courts. She earned her J.D. from Columbia University School of Law in May, 1973, graduating first in her class. She also graduated from Radcliffe College (Harvard University), again first in her class, with a B.A. in June 1966.