Howard Herman has worked as a mediator and as a developer of ADR programs since 1985. He currently mediates through JAMS in San Francisco, where he specializes in matters involving high emotion and complex power dynamics. He has mediated several thousand disputes covering a wide variety of case types including employment, business/commercial, disability access, civil rights, copyright, trademark, and environmental.

Before joining JAMS in 2020, for more than two decades Mr. Herman led the highly regarded ADR program of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco. At the District Court, in addition to ongoing program design and development, Mr. Herman had primary responsibility for selecting, training, and supervising the hundreds of lawyers who serve as volunteer neutrals in the court’s ADR programs. He was the lead trainer for the court’s mediation and early neutral evaluation trainings, and he oversaw numerous continuing education programs for the volunteers, including the development and leadership of an innovative program of on-going practice groups for the court’s mediators and settlement conference judges. Prior to his work at the Northern District, Mr. Herman directed the ADR Program for Contra Costa Superior Court and served as a pre-briefing settlement conference attorney for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Since 1996, Mr. Herman has served as an adjunct professor teaching negotiation and mediation related courses at UC Law San Francisco (formerly Hastings College of the Law), where he also co-led a dispute systems design seminar for international judges and lawyers. In addition, Mr. Herman has developed and taught numerous ADR training courses for lawyers and judges throughout the United States and internationally, including programs focused on negotiation, effective communication skills, having difficult conversations, and civil discourse.

Mr. Herman is a recognized leader in the development of the ADR field. He was Chair of the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution in 2015-16, and he has served on that Section’s Quality of Mediation Task Force, the Ninth Circuit ADR Committee, the California Judicial Council’s working group for the development of ethical standards for court-connected mediators, and the ADR Committee of the California State Bar. Mr. Herman was an inaugural recipient in 2002 of the Robert F. Peckham Award for Excellence in Alternative Dispute Resolution presented by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and he received this award again in 2019. In 2011, he was co-recipient of the Mediation Society of San Francisco’s annual Award for Outstanding Contribution in the Field of Mediation. In 2013, he was the inaugural recipient of the Exceptional Service Award presented by the University of California, Hastings College of the Law’s Center for Negotiation and Dispute Resolution.

Mr. Herman previously practiced as a civil litigator with the firms of Graham & James and Kindel & Anderson in San Francisco. He received his J.D. from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, and his A.B., with Highest Honors, from the University of California at Berkeley.