Richard Birke

Richard Birke is a Senior Vice President of JAMS and the Executive Director of the JAMS Institute—the teaching and training arm of JAMS. In that capacity, Birke leads a team of educators and professionals committed to providing JAMS with exceptional internal training, starting with new panelists and continuing with the nation’s most experienced neutrals. In addition, the Institute’s role as an external trainer and education provider continues to expand both domestically and internationally, with ADR courses across the U.S. and in the E.U., Asia, Latin America and North Africa.

Prior to joining JAMS, Birke was a trial lawyer in the greater Boston area, a graduate student at Harvard Law, Associate Director of the Stanford Center on Conflict and Negotiation and a lecturer in law at Stanford Law School. In 1993, he became a law professor at Willamette University and director of its Center for Dispute Resolution. While at Willamette, Birke directed the program to a topfive ranking and the Ninth Circuit ADR Education Award.

Birke has won two national writing awards for his work in the psychology and neuroscience of mediation and negotiation, taught dozens of innovative courses around the world, given hundreds of invited lectures and speeches, and mediated complex disputes ranging from international child abduction to class-action civil rights to creation of national wilderness areas and beyond. He remains active in all areas of his practice—writing, teaching, training, consulting and mediating—now proudly under the JAMS banner.