About Janet
Janet Martinez brings a rare combination of scientific training, legal education and policy study to a career spent around negotiation tables and classrooms. Her academic path began in the sciences. She earned a B.S. in bacteriology and public health from Washington State University in 1973. She then moved into law, completing a J.D. at Golden Gate University School of Law in 1980. Later study returned her to public policy: a Master of Public Administration from Harvard Kennedy School in 1991 and a Ph.D. in public policy and conflict resolution from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1996.
Those degrees have informed a steady career split between practice, consulting and teaching. Early on she joined the California bar and later secured admission to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. She worked as a senior associate and consultant at the Consensus Building Institute in the mid-1990s. In 2004 she served as a senior consultant for LAX SEBENIUS LLC: The Negotiation Group. Her roles have commonly centered on design and facilitation of negotiated settlements in complex disputes.
Teaching has been a constant thread. She lectured at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School in 1992 and taught a course on Courts and American Society at MIT in 1996. She began a longer tenure at Stanford Law School in 2005, where she has served as a senior lecturer and director of the Gould Negotiation & Mediation Program. Those faculty roles placed her in front of law students, judges and professionals looking to sharpen practical bargaining and dispute-resolution skills.
Her subject matter ranges across public and private disputes. She holds memberships in the American Bar Association Dispute Resolution Section, the Association for Conflict Resolution, and the U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution. Since 1999 she has been listed as an arbitrator and advisory council member at the Center for Public Resources. That combination of arbitration, mediation and classroom work shapes the kinds of cases she accepts and the trainings she offers.
Colleagues describe her style as practical and process-oriented. She designs sessions intended to clarify interests, map options and create workable agreements. She has worked on environmental and policy disputes as well as on negotiations that touch on intellectual property and regulatory questions, a background supported by her USPTO credential and public policy doctorate.
She continues to teach at Stanford Law School and to accept dispute-resolution engagements, splitting time between academic duties and mediation, arbitration and negotiation practice.
