Jennifer Shack

Jennifer Shack has been Director of Research at Resolution Systems Institute since 2000. In this role, she conducts complex evaluations of court-based mediation programs and researches the effectiveness of mediation in court settings. As part of RSI’s efforts to help courts monitor the functioning of their mediation programs, she has designed data collection systems that are in use around Illinois. This includes the cloud-based case management and monitoring system used by the Illinois Attorney General-funded foreclosure mediation programs.

Program evaluation is Jennifer’s passion. During her time at RSI, she has evaluated the performance of eight foreclosure mediation programs in Illinois and conducted comprehensive evaluations of the child protection mediation programs in Washington, DC, and Cook County, Illinois. Her other evaluation projects range from mediation of Lanham Act cases in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, a multi-site pilot of civil stalking cases in Ohio and civil, small claims and family case mediation programs in courts throughout Illinois. She is currently conducting evaluations of ODR programs in Hawaii and Texas, a juvenile re-entry mediation pilot in Chicago and a truancy mediation pilot in Ohio.

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?," and "Judicial Settlement Databases: Development and Uses," co-authored with Magistrate Judge Morton Denlow. Most recently, she co-authored “Promoting Access to Justice: Applying Lessons Learned from Foreclosure Mediation.” Jennifer also discusses issues related to court ADR on RSI's blog, Just Court ADR, and summarizes research for RSI’s e-newsletter, Court ADR Connection.

Additionally, Jennifer serves on the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolution Research Task Force. She has presented on program monitoring and evaluation at numerous national and regional conferences.

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.