J.D., Columbia Law School, 2003
B.A., Georgetown University, 1997
Mediation
Civil Litigation
As the director of the Law School’s Mediation Clinic since 2008, Alexandra Carter ’03 trains students in various forms of alternative dispute resolution. Under her guidance, students learn negotiation strategies and counsel clients in federal, state, and New York City courts; cases range from family business disputes to complaints filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In 2016, Carter established a partnership with the United Nations Institute for Training and Research, and her students are the exclusive providers of alternative dispute resolution instruction for the United Nations’ New York diplomatic corps. She is currently training judicial and administrative leaders from courts in New York State, which will soon require that most civil litigation be resolved through presumptive mediation rather than in open court.
In 2019, Columbia University honored Carter with the Presidential Award for Teaching for her innovative pedagogy and commitment to her students. Carter developed her passion for mediation and teaching as a student in the Law School’s Mediation Clinic, which was directed by Professor Carol Liebman, who became her mentor and role model. As a student, Carter won the Jane Marks Murphy Prize for clinical advocacy and the Lawrence S. Greenbaum Prize for best oral argument in the 2002 Harlan Fiske Stone Moot Court Competition.
Before enrolling at the Law School, Carter was a private equity analyst at Goldman Sachs and a Fulbright Scholar in Taiwan, where she researched its contemporary literature to assess cross-strait political tensions.
After receiving her J.D., Carter clerked on the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts and then joined Cravath, Swaine & Moore as a litigator. She was drawn back to the academy by Liebman and other mentors at Columbia Law School. Carter’s fresh take on negotiation is the subject of her forthcoming general-interest book, Ask for More: 10 Questions to Negotiate Anything, to be published by Simon & Schuster as a lead title in May 2020.
“I strive to create in the classroom the same environment we create in a mediation: a place where everyone knows they can be heard, where their voices matter, and they have the power to decide what their future looks like.”
Carter appeared on CBS This Morning in a segment on how families and friends can avoid divisive discussions of politics this Thanksgiving.