Appendix - The College of Commercial Arbitrators Protocols for Expeditious, Cost-Effective Commercial Arbitration - The College of Commercial Arbitrators Guide to Best Practices in Commercial Arbitration - 2nd Edition
Thomas J. Stipanowich, William H. Webster Chair in Dispute Resolution and Professor of Law at Pepperdine University School of Law and Academic Director of the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution, has had a distinguished career as a scholar, teacher, and leader in the field as well as a commercial and construction arbitrator and mediator, federal court special master, and facilitator. From 2001 until mid-2006, he served as CEO of the International Institute for Conflict Prevention & Resolution (CPR); prior to that time he was a litigator with a national construction law firm and, for fourteen years, a chaired professor of law. He was co-author with Ian Macneil and Richard Speidel of the much-cited multi-volume treatise Federal Arbitration Law (Little, Brown & Co. 1994). He edited Commercial Arbitration at Its Best (ABA 2001), the report of the CPR Commission on the Future of Arbitration. He co-authored a groundbreaking book and materials for law schools entitled Resolving Disputes: Theory, Practice, and Law (Aspen Publishing, 2d ed. 2010). In 2008 he was awarded the highest honor of the ABA Dispute Resolution Section, the D’Alemberte-Raven Award, for contributions to the field of conflict resolution. He has twice (1987, 2010) received the CPR Best Professional Article award, most recently for “Arbitration: The ‘New Litigation’” and “Arbitration and Choice.” He is one of very few individuals accorded the title of Companion by the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators. He holds a Bachelors (with highest honors) and Masters in Architecture as well as a Juris Doctor (magna cum laude, Order of the Coif) from the University of Illinois. He is an arbitrator and mediator with JAMS.
Curtis E. von Kann, a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, was a civil litigator for sixteen years, principally as an associate, then partner in the Washington, DC law firm of Hogan & Hartson. In 1985 President Ronald Reagan appointed him a Judge of the District of Columbia Superior Court where he presided over hundreds of jury and non-jury trials and was a principal designer of the Court's highly successful civil case management and ADR program. Since 1997 he has served as a full-time arbitrator and mediator in the Washington office of JAMS and has written and spoken widely on a variety of ADR topics. He is currently President of the College of Commercial Arbitrators and was Editor-in-Chief of the first edition of the College's Guide to Best Practices in Commercial Arbitration.
Deborah Rothman, a magna cum laude graduate of Yale College, received her Masters in Public Affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University and her Juris Doctor from NYU School of Law. After practicing law with Manatt Phelps in Los Angeles, she became President and CEO of Baby Fair Enterprises. Since 1991, she has been a full-time mediator and arbitrator with the American Arbitration Association in New York and Los Angeles, specializing in business, entertainment, franchise, intellectual property and employment matters. She also provides arbitration consulting services in high-stakes arbitrations and has been on the Board of the College of Commercial Arbitrators since 2003.
The College of Commercial Arbitrators was established in 2001. Its mission is to promote the highest standards of conduct, professionalism and ethics in commercial arbitration, to develop "best practices" guidelines and materials, and to provide peer training and professional development. Its membership currently consists of approximately two hundred leading commercial arbitrators in the United States and abroad.
In response to mounting complaints that commercial arbitration has become as slow and costly as litigation, thus substantially diminishing its appeal, the College decided in 2008 to convene the following year a National Summit on Business-to-Business Arbitration to identify the chief causes of the problem and explore concrete, practical steps that can be taken now to remedy them. The concept of a National Summit sprang from two key insights: (1) lengthy, costly arbitration results from the interaction of business users, in-house attorneys, the institutions that provide arbitration services, outside counsel and arbitrators; and (2) all of these "stakeholders" must collaborate in identifying and achieving desired efficiencies and economies in arbitration. Therefore, in addition to its own Fellows, who have considerable experience and expertise as commercial arbitrators (and, in many cases, as advocates), the College invited to the National Summit in-house counsel from numerous major companies that utilize arbitration, skilled advocates who represent such parties in arbitration in a wide variety of geographic regions and commercial specialties, and individuals who occupy key positions in leading institutional providers of arbitration services.
In anticipation of the Summit, the College appointed Task Forces composed of corporate counsel, outside counsel and arbitrators to study the issues and provide insight and perspective concerning the problems and possible solutions. Thereafter, the College's Summit Planning Committee carefully reviewed submissions from the Task Forces and developed a Draft Report for discussion at the Summit. The Report, edited by Fellows Professor Thomas Stipanowich, Curtis von Kann and Deborah Rothman, concluded with four Protocols containing proposed action steps for Business Users and In-House Counsel, Arbitration Provider Institutions, Outside Counsel and Arbitrators. The Draft Report, entitled "How to Drastically Reduce Cost and Delay in Commercial Arbitration,”1 was circulated to all Summit invitees in the early fall of 2009.
The National Summit was convened in Washington, D.C. at the end of October, 2009. A measure of the perceived importance of the Summit was the fact that five of the principal organizations involved in commercial arbitration, namely, the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolution, the American Arbitration Association, JAMS, the International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution (“CPR”), and the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators,