Lela Porter Love is a professor of law and founding director of the Kukin Program for Conflict Resolution at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law (NYC). Her program has been ranked by U.S. News and World Report among the top ten law school programs in the US in dispute resolution every year since 2000. She founded Cardozo’s Mediation Clinic, which was among the first clinical programs in the world to train law students to serve as mediators.
Professor Love serves as mediator, arbitrator and dispute resolution consultant in community, employment, family, human rights, school-based and commercial cases. She regularly conducts mediation training programs and courses both in the U.S. and abroad.
She is Past Chair of the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolution. In her chair year she initiated the first International Mediation Leadership Summit at the Peace Palace in the Hague.
She has written widely on the topic of dispute resolution, including co-authoring three law school textbooks, all in a third edition. She mediated a simulated product liability dispute that was broadcast numerous times by COURT TV. The Middle Voice: Mediating Conflict Successfully, written with Joseph Stulberg, now in its third edition, is regularly used to train mediators and introduce mediation. Her latest books, Stories Mediators Tell, and Stories Mediators Tell—World Edition are collections of vivid stories about mediations.
Professor Love has been recognized as a 2023 Global Elite Thought Leader by Who’s Who Legal. She received an ADR Achievement Award from the Association of Conflict Resolution of Greater New York (2012). She received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Association of Mediators (IAM) (2012) and from the American College of Civil Trial Mediators (2010). She was honored at recognition night by the Network for Peace Through Dialogue (2009). She received the “Front Line Champion” Award at the Association of the Bar of NYC on Mediation Settlement Day (2009). In 1997 Victim Services (now the NY Peace Institute) gave her an award “in appreciation for years of unwavering commitment, support, training, guidance, mediation and friendship.” In 1997, with Daniel Weitz, she successfully co-mediated the first case between a civilian and a police officer as an invited member of the Pilot Mediation Panel for the NYC Civilian Complaint Review Board (1997). In 1993 she received a citation from the city of Glen Cove for mediating a long-standing dispute between the city and Salvadoran day laborers.
In addition to her work in ADR, she developed and directed the Small Business Clinic at George Washington University’s National Law Center. She received her B.A. from Harvard University, a M.Ed. from Virginia Commonwealth University, and a J.D. degree from Georgetown University Law School. She is a member of the Bar in New York and New Hampshire.
