Professor Welsh is a leading scholar of dispute resolution and procedural law. Her research and writing examine negotiation, mediation, arbitration, judicial settlement conferences, ODR and dispute resolution generally, in both domestic and international contexts. She has focused particularly on self-determination, procedural justice, due process, and the institutionalization of dispute resolution in more than 60 articles and chapters that have appeared in law reviews, professional publications and books. She is also co-author of a leading legal textbook, DISPUTE RESOLUTION AND LAWYERS, 5TH ED. In 2006, she conducted research as a Fulbright Scholar regarding the Netherlands’ institutionalization of court-connected mediation and taught in the Private Law department of Tilburg University. She is Chair of the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolution and has previously served as Chair of the AALS Alternative Dispute Resolution Section and Co-Chair of the Editorial Board of the Dispute Resolution Magazine. She has also been named Visiting Scholar of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School and Visiting Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study at Indiana University-Bloomington.

Before joining the legal academy, Professor Welsh was a corporate litigator with the firm of Leonard, Street and Deinard and was the executive director of a dispute resolution organization serving the state of Minnesota. She has advised state and federal courts regarding the institutionalization of dispute resolution, conducted empirical research, and convened and conducted roundtables and symposia on the use of dispute resolution in various contexts. Professor Welsh serves as a mediator, dispute resolution advisor and trainer, and she teaches Civil Procedure, Negotiation/Mediation, Federal Courts and Dispute System Design Seminar. She received her law school’s Teaching Excellence Award in 2010. She earned her B.A. magna cum laude from Allegheny College and her J.D. from Harvard Law School.