Lela Porter Love is a professor of law and the founding director of the Kukin Program for Conflict Resolution at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law (NYC). The Kukin Program has been ranked by U.S. News and World Report among the top ten law school programs in the US in dispute resolution since 2000.  She founded (in 1985) Cardozo's Mediation Clinic—one of the first clinical programs to train law students to serve as mediators.

Love has served as mediator, arbitrator and dispute resolution consultant in community, employment, family, human rights, school-based and commercial cases. An active educator and participant in dispute resolution activities, she regularly conducts mediation training programs and courses both domestic and international.      

Love is Past Chair of the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolution.  In her chair year she initiated the first International Mediation Leadership Summit in the Hague. 

Her mediation of a public policy dispute in Glen Cove, NY, brought widespread publicity to the use of mediation in resolving complex litigation.

She has written widely on the topic of dispute resolution, including co-authoring three law school textbooks. Among her books are: The Middle Voice, co-authored with Joseph Stulberg, and two collections of stories about mediations—Stories Mediators Tell and Stories Mediators Tell—World Edition.

The International Academy of Mediators gave Lela a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012; the American College of Civil Trial Mediators gave her a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010; and she received the “Front Line Champion” Award at the Association of the Bar of NYC on Mediation Settlement Day (2009).