Jennifer Shack

Jennifer Shack has more than two decades of experience conducting complex evaluations of court-based mediation and online dispute resolution (ODR) programs and researching the effectiveness of ADR. She also designs case management and evaluation systems.

Program evaluation is Jennifer’s passion. Her projects include outcome and process evaluations of foreclosure, child protection, eviction, juvenile and family mediation programs, such as a multi-site evaluation of eight foreclosure mediation programs in Illinois and comprehensive evaluations of the child protection mediation programs in Washington, DC, and Cook County, Illinois. More recently, she has evaluated family ODR and debt and small claims ODR in Michigan and Texas.

In addition to program evaluation, Jennifer researches issues surrounding access to justice. Participants in RSI’s OPEN Project focus groups uncovered new barriers to participation in court programs. RSI’s ongoing Trust Project seeks to determine whether particular mediator behaviors promote party trust in the mediator and between self-represented parties.

In cooperation with the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolution, Jennifer led a national committee of the top court ADR researchers in developing the RSI/ABA Model Mediation Surveys. This toolkit provides field-tested surveys of parties, lawyers and mediators that can be used by any court to evaluate its civil case mediation program or modified for programs involving other case types.

Jennifer has also written a number of articles, including the widely cited “Mediation in Courts Can Bring Gains, But Under What Conditions?” Most recently, she co-authored “Access to Justice: Lessons for Designing Text-based Court-Connected ODR Programs.” She also co-authored a chapter in the book Family Dispute Resolution: Process and Practice. Jennifer also discusses related to court ADR on RSI's blog, Just Court ADR, and summarizes research for RSI’s newsletter, Court ADR Connection.

Additionally, Jennifer served on the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolution Research Task Force and is currently co-chair of the Section’s Court Committee. She regularly presents on her research at conferences and on webinars.

Jennifer was first drawn to ADR by seeing it in action in Benin, West Africa, during her Peace Corps service. She is thrilled to be involved in assuring its effective use here in the US.