DaytonDailyNews.com

DAYTON — Claudia sat quietly at the conference table while her lawyer argued her sexual harassment case with her boss, his lawyer and a mediator trying to speed a settlement. Without once leaving the room, the two sides agreed to take money off the negotiating table but give Claudia a promotion to a different department.

In reality, however, none of the five parties was in the room. One was trapped in a New York airport. Three others were at home in Dayton, Cincinnati and Indianapolis. And the fifth was in her office at the University of Dayton Law School.

That's because the negotiations took place in Second Life, a Web site where the parties could interact online as a collection of animated characters, or avatars, of their choosing.

Sound silly? As the University of Dayton law students in Andrea Seielstadt's Dispute Resolution Class learned recently, not as silly as you might think. Seielstadt decided to use Second Life as both an introduction to future methods of mediation and a way to let her students return home while still taking the one-week intercession course this month.

"It's a perfect scenario for when you all can't be in the same city" for negotiations, said Matt Schulz, a first-year law student who played the mediator. "You don't have to worry about airfare and travel."

An advantage over conference calling is that all parties are in view in Second Life. "Just the fact that you're all sitting around a table forces you to focus," Schulz said.

Jonathan James, a first-year student who played Claudia's attorney, said the avatars may not be real "but their personality still comes through" in how they communicate and how they are dressed by their users.

Avatars can communicate with their user's voice or by texting. The latter creates an ongoing transcript that can be reviewed by all parties during the proceedings. And while one person is texting the entire group, others can be shooting private Instant Messages back and forth. In a real-life setting, lawyers would have to stop the proceedings and leave the room to consult privately with their clients or the mediator.

There are still technical issues to be worked out, students said. Some had trouble keeping their Internet connection, and at least one kept losing her avatar in cyberspace.

Seielstadt said Second Life is a mixed blessing: It can eliminate the biases generated by voices and appearances, but it also eliminates the gestures, intonations and facial expressions that are a big part of human communication.

Still, she said, it's a convenient tool that allows her to supervise multiple negotiations at once, without leaving her office. "While the jury may still be out on whether it would be a good place to offer real dispute resolution services, I'm convinced it's an exceptional place to teach students."