Audrey J. Lee is a Senior Mediator at Boston Law Collaborative, LLC and Executive Director of the BLC Institute, a non-profit dedicated to providing education and training in all areas of dispute resolution. She is also a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School where she teaches courses on Mediation and Diversity & Dispute Resolution, faculty for the Harvard Mediation Intensive, and the founding Principal of Perspectiva LLC.
Audrey specializes in mediating workplace, employment, harassment, and discrimination disputes. She is Chair of BLC’s ADR Panel and serves on the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission mediation panel, among other neutral panels. Previously, Audrey served as a mediator for the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination where she mediated harassment, disability, age, race, and gender discrimination cases. Audrey has also served as a member of a pool of Title IX Adjudicators for Harvard Law School.
Drawing on her experience as a mediator and conflict management consultant, Audrey leads interactive workshops on implicit bias for attorneys, mediators, law enforcement, executives and other professionals. She has also taught employment discrimination and harassment prevention programs for a range of audiences including ironworkers, mental health professionals, bank executives, and teachers. In the diversity context, Audrey has partnered with the Institute for Inclusion in the Legal Profession and the Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program on a study of law firm communication practices regarding diversity issues.
In her consulting practice, Audrey works with clients to develop their ability to engage more productively in difficult workplace conversations and negotiations. Her private sector clients include The Cambridge Group, Jenner & Block LLP, Exponent Failure Analysis Associates, Ropes & Gray LLP, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP, and Winston & Strawn LLP. In the public sector, she has led advanced mediation, diversity and bias programs for the Australian Fair Work Commission, the Office of the UN Ombudsman and Mediation Service, the League of American Orchestras, the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism, and the Office of the IL Attorney General. She has also taught Negotiation courses as Adjunct Faculty at Northwestern University School of Law, DePaul University College of Law, and U Mass Boston’s McCormack Graduate School’s Department of Conflict Resolution.
Audrey is featured in Harvard Business Review’s “Insights” series on Leadership and Managing People and has been a contributing commentator for the BBC Capital’s Work Ethic column. She has also published articles on unconscious bias, employment discrimination, negotiation, interactive teaching methods, and managing diversity issues within firms: “‘What Would You Say?’ Giving Teeth to Diversity Programming,” Institute for Inclusion in the Legal Profession Review: The State of Diversity and Inclusion in the Legal Profession (Spring 2013); “Effectively Negotiating Diversity Issues Within Law Firms: The Value of Applying Negotiation Pedagogy and Principles to Diversity CLE and Training,” NALP Bulletin (June 2009); “Negotiating Part-Time Work at Elite Law Firms,” 6 Pepp. Disp. Resol. L.J. 405 (2006); Audrey J. Lee, “Unconscious Bias Theory in Employment Discrimination Litigation,” 40 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. 481 (2005). Her latest article, “Implicit Bias in Mediation,” was published in the Spring 2020 issue of the Harvard Negotiation Law Review.
Outside of mediating and teaching, Audrey is active in community and professional associations. She is a member of the Mass Bar Association’s Dispute Resolution Section Council and Past President of the Association for Conflict Resolution Chicago Chapter. She has also served as a past Board member for her children’s School Site Council and after-school program. Previously, Audrey practiced law as an intellectual property and litigation attorney at Winston & Strawn in Chicago and Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York. Audrey is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School.
*Admitted in NY and IL but retired (NY)/inactive (IL); not admitted in Massachusetts.