Alexandra Carter is a legal expert in alternative dispute resolution, who has trained law students in mediation and negotiation strategies since 2008 as the director of the Law School’s Mediation Clinic. The cases her students work on range from family business disputes to complaints filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and students counsel clients in federal, state, and New York City courts. In 2016, Carter established a partnership with the United Nations Institute for Training and Research, making her students the exclusive providers of alternative dispute resolution instruction for the United Nations’ New York diplomatic corps.

Carter’s innovative pedagogy and commitment to her students earned her the Presidential Award for Teaching from Columbia University in 2019. She developed her passion for mediation and teaching as a student in the Law School’s Mediation Clinic, winning 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 joining the Law School, Carter was a private equity analyst at Goldman Sachs and a Fulbright Scholar in Taiwan, where she researched 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 worked as a litigator at Cravath, Swaine & Moore.

Carter’s innovative approach to negotiation is the subject of her book, Ask for More: 10 Questions to Negotiate Anything. Published by Simon & Schuster in May 2020, the book became an instant Wall Street Journal Business bestseller, and was the first negotiation book authored by a woman to make the list. Currently, Carter is 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..

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