Business Conflict Blog

At the ABA Annual Meeting, in the course of a panel on arbitration developments, veteran arbitrator Deborah Rothman tee-ed up a fascinating challenge.  Clients regularly engage consultants in litigation.  Why not in arbitration?

Indeed, isn’t the value of a consultant in arbitration much more evident?  Arbitration has special challenges, different legal standards, truncated discovery and a distinct enabling procedural statute.  And the unavailability of appeal puts far more emphasis on getting a right outcome.  Rothman suggests that a very strong argument can be made for the arbitration consultant. Read more »

Tags: Arbitration

Last Spring, the ABA Sections of Business Law and of Dispute Resolution featured several programs anticipating the release of the Protocols for Expeditious, Cost-Effective Commercial Arbitration promulgated by the College of Commercial Arbitrators.  The Protocols are the main product of the multi-party Summit that was convened by the CCA in October 2009.

The Protocols have now been released in final form and are available here.  I encourage attorneys, arbitrators and users of arbitration to print out a copy and study it carefully.

Tags: Arbitration

On Saturday of the ABA Annual Meeting a group of judges presented a panel on “ADR in the Business Courts: How Commercial Judges Encourage Settlement.”  Joining Vice Chancellor Don Parsons (Delaware), Judge Steven Platt (Maryland), Judge Ira Warshawsky (New York) and Judge Ben Tennille (North Carolina) were Bankruptcy Judge Elizabeth Stong (Eastern District of New York) and New Jersey attorney Robert Margulies, who was instrumental in framing the presumptive mediation program for the state courts of New Jersey. Read more »

Tags: ADR, Courts

One of the most in-demand items at the ABA Annual Meeting was a seat at the Moscone Center for the panel titled “Shaping the Law: A Solicitor’s General Roundtable.”  The misplaced apostrophe notwithstanding, it was enlightening and a lot of fun.

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Tags: Public Policy