This program will explore how the principles of game theory can provide new insights into negotiation, litigation, and dispute resolution. You’ll learn how to recognize common game structures in legal conflicts, apply strategic reasoning to your advantage, and understand when cooperation may serve your client better than competition. While game theory won't solve your case for you, it offers a powerful framework for making smarter, more informed decisions—especially in high-stakes or adversarial settings.
Presenter: Harold Paddock, Esq.
In his court-based experience and in private practice, Harold Paddock has successfully mediated cases in the fields of personal injury, wrongful death, contracts, foreclosure, workers compensation, land use, eminent domain/appropriation, non-competition clauses, consumer sales practices, and general business litigation. His prior experience as a Magistrate includes presiding over both jury and jury-waived trials. He is the co-creator of the widely duplicated Settlement Week program for resolving civil cases with volunteer attorneys as mediators. As part of helping other jurisdictions set up Settlement Week programs, he has been a mediation trainer.
Mr. Paddock brings 52 years of legal and litigation experience to his private practice as a civil case mediator. Retired from the Franklin County Common Pleas Court, where he was Magistrate and Settlement Week Coordinator, and most recently the Clermont County Common Pleas Court where he served as Court Mediator and Senior Magistrate, Mr. Paddock has decades of experience and training to apply at the mediation table. In his experience as a Magistrate, he has presided over summary jury trials (an experience that would apply to mock trials), resolved discovery disputes, managed complex litigation, created court dispute resolution systems, and designed and used mediation processes for large numbers of foreclosure cases. When in private practice as a mediator, he served as a Special Master in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio for foreclosure cases.
With a background in science and engineering, Mr. Paddock is comfortable with cases involving high technology, physics, and chemistry. Prior experience with pandemic mediation and other cases has given him considerable experience with Zoom mediation. As a native of Cleveland and having worked in Columbus and Cincinnati, Mr. Paddock can mediate and provide other dispute resolution services in all of Ohio's counties.
He is a frequent speaker for CLE programs and is an active member of the Columbus Bar Association.
1.5 CLE Hou