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22 February 2018 / Richard Harrison
Issue: 7782 / Categories: Features , Profession
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Hamilton for lawyers #2

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Richard Harrison returns with Ten DR Commandments inspired by the 2018 Olivier award winner Hamilton

Previously in this journal I wrote an article inspired by Lin-Manuel Miranda’s celebrated musical Hamilton. It looked at the legal career of Alexander Hamilton and some of the lessons, including mediation skills, to be learned from the negotiation of the 1790 Compromise which led to Washington DC becoming the US capital.

One of the main, and tragic, themes of the show is the culture and consequences of the duelling code prevalent in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Litigation is nowadays one of the main substitutes for the duel and the elaborate code of challenge, compromise and mediation is now used to deal with legal problems. As is made clear in the song ‘Ten Duel Commandments’: ‘ Most disputes die and no one shoots ’.

And given that the song is highly catchy, I had a think about it in the context of ‘Ten DR (dispute resolution) Commandments’.

The first step in any dispute resolution procedure is to identify

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