2010 Arbitration and Mediation Guest-Bloggers at Disputing

During 2010, Disputing was honored to post contributions from several law professors and practitioners. Some wrote guest-posts, others submitted comments via e-mail, and yet others alerted us of important developments in the ADR area. We would like to thank our blog contributors for improving Disputing‘s legal scholarship!

If you are interested in submitting materials for Disputing, please e-mail us at: beth@karlbayer.com.

Check out our 2010 blog contributors! (You may read their commentary by following the link after each bio.)

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The Honorable W. Royal Furgeson, Jr. received a B.A. from Texas Tech University in 1964 and a J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law in 1967. He was a United States Army Captain from 1967 to 1969 and an assistant county attorney in Lubbock, Texas in 1969. From 1969 to 1970 he was a law clerk for the Honorable Halbert O. Woodward at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. Furgeson was in private practice in El Paso, Texas from 1970 to 1993.

Furgeson currently serves as a federal judge on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. He was nominated by President Bill Clinton on November 19, 1993 and confirmed by the United States Senate on March 10, 1994. He may be contacted at: Royal_Furgeson@txnd.uscourts.gov. His posts may be read here. (Photo source: Federal Bar Association)

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Don Philbin is an AV-rated attorney-mediator, negotiation consultant and trainer and arbitrator. He has resolved disputes and crafted deals for more than 20 years as a commercial litigator, general counsel and president of communications and technology-related companies. Don has mediated hundreds of matters in a wide variety of substantive areas and serves as an arbitrator on several panels, including CPR’s Panels of Distinguished Neutrals. He is an adjunct professor at the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution at Pepperdine Law School, Chair of the ABA Dispute Resolution Section’s Negotiation Committee and a member of the ADR Section Council of the State Bar of Texas. Don is a Fellow of the American Academy of Civil Trial Mediators and is listed in The Best Lawyers in America (Dispute Resolution), Texas Super Lawyers (2010), The Best Lawyers in San Antonio and the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers. He may be contacted at: don.philbin@ADRtoolbox.com. His posts may be read here.

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Peter S. Vogel is a trial partner at Gardere Wynne Sewell LLP where he is Chair of the Electronic Discovery Group and Co-Chair of the Technology Industry Team. Before practicing law he worked as a computer programmer, received a Masters in Computer Science, and taught graduate courses in information systems. For 12 years he served as the founding Chair of the Texas Supreme Court on Judicial Information Technology which is responsible for helping automate the Texas court system and putting Internet on the desktops of all 3,200 judges. Peter has taught courses on the Law of eCommerce at the SMU Dedman School of Law since 2000. Many of Peter’s topics are discussed on his blog www.vogelitlawblog.com. His posts are available here.

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Alan Scott Rau is the Mark G. and Judy G. Yudof Chair in Law at The University of Texas at Austin School of Law. He received his BA and LLB from Harvard University. Professor Rau teaches and writes in the areas of Contracts and Alternative Dispute Resolution (particularly Arbitration). He is co-author of Processes of Dispute Resolution: The Role of Lawyers (3rd ed., 2002); ADR and Arbitration: Statutes and Commentary (West, 1998), and Cases and Materials on Contracts (West, 2nd ed. 1992), and the author of several articles, including “The Arbitrability Question Itself” (American Review of International Arbitration, 1999); “La Contractualisation de l’Arbitrage: Le Modele Americain” (Revue de l’Arbitrage, 2001), and “All You Need to Know About Separability in Seventeen Simple Propositions” (American Review of International Arbitration, 2003). He serves on the Commercial and International Panels of the American Arbitration Association, and has been a visiting faculty member at the University of Toronto, China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing, Willamette University College of Law, the University of Geneva; and the Universities of Paris-I and Paris-II. Some of Professor Rau’s scholarly papers may be downloaded at the Social Science Research Network. His posts are available here.

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S.I. Strong is currently Associate Professor of Law at the University of Missouri and Senior Fellow at the award-winning Center for the Study of Dispute Resolution, having previously taught law at the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Prior to joining the faculty at Missouri, Dr Strong was Counsel specializing in international dispute resolution at Baker & McKenzie LLP and a dual-qualified practitioner (U.S.-England) in the New York and London offices of Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP. Dr Strong has acted in arbitral proceedings under a wide range of institutional rules and is listed as a neutral on various national and international rosters. Dr Strong is the author of numerous works on international arbitration, including the award-winning article, The Sounds of Silence: Are U.S. Arbitrators Creating Internationally Enforceable Awards When Ordering Class Arbitration in Cases of Contractual Silence or Ambiguity? 30 Michigan Journal of International Law 1017 (2009), as well as the books Research and Practice in International Commercial Arbitration: Sources and Strategies (2009) and Class Arbitration and Collective Arbitration: Mass Claims in the National and International Sphere (forthcoming), both from Oxford University Press. Dr Strong, who is qualified as a lawyer at the New York and Illinois bars and as a solicitor of the Supreme Court of England and Wales, holds a Ph.D. in law from the University of Cambridge, a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford, a J.D. from Duke University, an M.P.W. from the University of Southern California and a B.A. from the University of California. Her posts may be read here.

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Thomas J. Stipanowich is the William H. Webster Chair in Dispute Resolution and Professor of Law at Pepperdine University, as well as Academic Director of the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution. The Straus Institute was ranked number one among academic dispute resolution programs each of the last five years by U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT. He was co-author, with Ian Macneil and Richard Speidel, of the groundbreaking five-volume treatise FEDERAL ARBITRATION LAW: AGREEMENTS, AWARDS & REMEDIES UNDER THE FEDERAL ARBITRATION ACT, cited by the Supreme Court and many other federal and state courts, which was named Best New Legal Book by the Association of American Publishers. He also co-authored RESOLVING DISPUTES: THEORY, LAW AND PRACTICE, a law school course book supplemented by many practical exercises and illustrations on video; the second edition was just published. He is the author of many other much-cited publications on arbitration and dispute resolution, and has twice won the CPR Institute’s First Prize for Professional Articles (1987 and 2009)-most recently for Arbitration: The “New Litigation.” In 2008, he was given the D’Alemberte/Raven Award, the ABA Dispute Resolution Section’s highest honor, for contributions to the field. His post may be viewed here.

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Philip J. Loree Jr. is a partner in the Manhasset, New York based firm of Loree & Loree, which focuses its practice on commercial litigation, arbitration, and insurance- and reinsurance-related matters. Prior to forming Loree & Loree, Mr. Loree was a partner in the Litigation Department of New York City’s Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP, the oldest continuous law partnership in the United States. He was also a partner in the Insurance and Reinsurance Department of Rosenman & Colin LLP (now Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP), and a shareholder in the Litigation Department of Stevens & Lee, P.C.

He frequently comments on arbitration and reinsurance law at his firm’s blog, the Loree Reinsurance and Arbitration Law Forum, and in various trade and legal publications. He is owner and co-founder of LinkedIn’s Commercial and Industry Arbitration and Mediation Group, which provides an open forum for the discussion of commercial, industry and consumer ADR. He also owns and co-manages with other reinsurance professionals LinkedIn’s Reinsurance Claims group. His posts may be read here.

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James M. Gaitis is the former Director of the International Dispute Management Programme at the Centre for Energy, Petroleum & Mineral Law & Policy, University of Dundee, Scotland, where he remains a member of the Global Faculty. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the second edition of The College of Commercial Arbitrators Guide to Best Practices in Commercial Arbitration (J. Gaitis, C. von Kann, R. Wachsmuth forthcoming Fall 2010) and the author of numerous law review articles on the topic of arbitration, several of which have been repeatedly cited to the United States Supreme Court and lower state and federal appellate courts. Over the past twenty years he has served on a diverse array of arbitration rosters, including as a Fellow of the College of Commercial Arbitrators, a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, and as a panelist on the AAA Complex Case Panel and the Energy/Oil & Gas Panels of the AAA and CPR. He received his BA from the University of Notre Dame and his JD from the College of Law at the University of Iowa where he was an editor of the Iowa Law Review. He is also the author of two published novels. He may be reached via email at: gaitis1@aol.com. His posts may be read here.

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F. Peter Phillips is an arbitrator and mediator practicing in the New York City area. He teaches ADR and International Commercial Dispute Resolution at New York Law School. This post appeared in a different form at the Business Conflict Blog. His posts may be read here.

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Glen M. Wilkerson is a shareholder at Davis & Wilkerson, P.C. where he focuses on the areas of Personal Injury Law, Insurance Law & Litigation, Construction Law & Litigation, Commercial Litigation, Civil Litigation, and Professional Liability. Mr. Wilkerson holds a J.D. from The University of Texas and a B.S. from The University of Texas-Arlington. He may be reached at: gwilkerson@dwlaw.com. His posts are available here.

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Jane Reister Conard, J.D. is a health law consultant. She was in-house counsel with Intermountain Healthcare, an integrated healthcare system in Utah and Idaho, for 26 years until her retirement in 2008. She is a former AHLA board member, former chair of the AHLAADR Service, and a co-author of the AHLA Conflict Management Toolkit. Ms. Conard is a graduate of Macalester College and the University of California, Davis, King Hall School of Law. She may be reached via email at: jane_conard@yahoo.com. Her post may be viewed here.

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John DeGroote currently serves as the Liquidating Trustee to the BearingPoint, Inc. Liquidating Trust. He writes the blog Settlement Perspectives where he discusses new perspectives on settlement, negotiation, and related topics based on his experiences.John is a former President, Chief Legal Officer and Secretary at BearingPoint, Inc., formerly known as KPMG Consulting, Inc. Prior to that, he served as the company’s Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer.

DeGroote has also practiced law at McKool Smith, P.C. and Jackson Walker, L.L.P., where he managed complex technology, commercial, and intellectual property litigation matters. He holds a J.D. from Duke University School of Law and a B.A. from Mississippi State University. His post may be viewed here.

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Kent B. Scott is a shareholder in the law firm of Babcock Scott & Babcock in Salt Lake City whose practice focuses on the prevention and resolution of construction disputes. As a mediator and arbitrator, Mr. Scott currently serves on the AAA’s panel of mediators and the AAA’s Large Complex Construction Case Panel. He also serves on the arbitration and mediation panels for the U.S. District Courts (District of Utah), State District Court (Utah) and Utah Dispute Resolution. Mr. Scott is a founding member of the Dispute Resolution Section of the Utah Bar and a Trustee for the Utah Council on Conflict Resolution. He may be reached at: kent@babcockscott.com.

Cody W. Wilson is an associate in the law firm of Babcock Scott & Babcock, concentrating his practice in the area of construction law, is licensed in all courts in the State of Utah, the U.S. District Court of Utah, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims and is a member of the ABA Forum on the Construction Industry. He may be reached at: cody@babcockscott.com.

Mr. Scott and Mr. Wilson’s jointly authored posts may be read here.

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William G. Whitehill is a trial partner at Gardere Wynne Sewell LLP. Mr. Whitehill has represented an offshore drilling contractor, a national pipe and fittings foundry, a food products manufacturer, a natural gas producer, and other companies in substantial antitrust claims. Mr. Whitehill has also represented a plaintiff’s class in a successful trial and appeal of substantial pension benefit claims. He holds a B.B.A. in Finance from The University of Texas at Austin and a J.D. from Southern Methodist University. Mr. Whitehill may be reached at bwhitehill@gardere.com. His post may be read here.

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