Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) encompasses a series of tools and techniques that can sometimes enable disputes to be resolved faster, more conclusively, more privately and less expensively than by taking them to trial. When used by skilled trial attorneys, ADR can also help to shape an outcome that is more closely aligned with the client’s business needs and goals.

SRBC has been a leader in embracing ADR, and several of our partners have become leading providers of ADR services.

Jeffrey Stern heads our ADR practice. In addition to maintaining an active trial practice, Jeff frequently serves as a mediator, arbitrator and case evaluator. His ADR practice is broad, encompassing business and partnership disputes of all types, and cases involving personal injury, construction, and employment, among other fields. A high-profile example was his role in facilitating the $6 million settlement in Krueger v. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a case involving the alcohol-related death of an MIT freshman which received national and local attention. Jeff has been recognized as a Massachusetts Super Lawyer in alternative dispute resolution, is a Fellow of the American College of Civil Trial Mediators, and is listed in The Best Lawyers in America.

Natasha Lisman serves as an arbitrator in domestic and international disputes involving commercial, intellectual property, insurance, and reinsurance matters. She is on the arbitrator panels of the American Arbitration Association and its international division, the International Centre for Dispute Resolution; and of the World Intellectual Property Organization, on whose website many of her decisions in domain-name disputes can be found; and she is in the arbitrator database of the U.S. Council for International Business, the national committee of the International Chamber of Commerce. In 1999, Natasha served as Senior Counsel to the Claims Resolution Tribunal, an international arbitral body formed to resolve disputed claims to Holocaust-era Swiss bank accounts. She has been recognized by The Best Lawyers in America, and by Boston magazine as a Massachusetts Super Lawyer in business litigation and as one of the state’s top 50 female lawyers.

Jean Musiker maintains an ADR practice in employment and related civil rights matters and is frequently retained as a mediator or arbitrator. Jean was one of the original members of the Superior Court panel of the Office of Dispute Resolution. The former General Counsel to the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination and a Fellow of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers, she has also been retained to serve as a special master in cases prosecuted by state and federal civil rights agencies. Jean is listed in The Best Lawyers in America in labor and employment and has been recognized as one of the top 100 lawyers and one of the top 50 female lawyers in New England and Massachusetts by Boston magazine.

Senior trial lawyer Ed Barshak, a former president of the Boston Bar Association, has been described in Chambers USA as “one of the deans of the Bar,” and frequently serves as a mediator or arbitrator at the request of both private litigants and the courts.

ADR is more than a separate practice area of the Firm. It is something that informs our strategic thinking in all practice areas. Our attorneys recognize the costs—financial and otherwise—of protracted litigation. We continually look for creative solutions that will advance clients’ interests, and ADR provides several paths to such solutions. With substantial experience representing clients as advocates in complex domestic and international arbitration proceedings, as well as neutral evaluations, mediations, mini-trials and summary jury trials, we are well positioned to help clients resolve disputes in the most favorable and effective ways.

For more information regarding our alternative dispute resolution experience, please contact Jeffrey S. Stern (Chair), at stern@srbc.com or 617-227-3030.

Related Publications:

May 15, 2009 -
First Circuit: Arbitrator May Revisit and Clarify Award
Arbitration rules typically prevent an arbitrator who has decided a dispute by issuing an award from later reconsidering the merits and revising the decision. The arbitrator usually may only make clerical corrections. But as SRBC's Paul White writes in a recent article in the Massachusetts Reinsurance Bar Association newsletter MReBA Cover Notes, the First Circuit has recently upheld an arbitrator's substantive revision of an award. The court held that the revision was permissible because it clarified the award, rather than altering the original result.

Related News:

August 13, 2010 -
Eleven SRBC Partners Named to Annual "Best Lawyers in America" List

Eleven SRBC partners have been named to the 2011 edition of The Best Lawyers in America, an annual publication that calls itself "the definitive guide to legal excellence in the United States." This year's selections are based on surveys in which more than 3.1 million leading lawyers were asked to evaluate their professional peers.

The SRBC partners were recognized in nearly all of the firm's practice areas--see the list below (which for simplicity uses our own nomenclature rather than Best Lawyers').  And Tony Doniger was named in the prestigious separate category for "Bet-the-Company Litigation."

• Alternative Dispute Resolution (Jeffrey Stern, Natasha Lisman)
• Appeals (Susan Hartnett)
• Business Litigation (Ed Barshak, Tony Doniger, Natasha Lisman)
• Domestic Relations and Probate Litigation (Ed Barshak, Tony Doniger, Alan Geismer)
• Employment Law (Jean Musiker)
• Environmental Law (Lisa Goodheart)
• Insurance and Reinsurance (Sam Furgang, Susan Hartnett, Natasha Lisman, Regina Roman)
• Medical Malpractice & Pharmaceutical Liability (David Barry)
• Product Liability (David Barry)
• Professional Liability (Regina Roman)

May 11, 2010 -
Jeff Stern: Apologizing Doctors and Medical Malpractice
BBA partner Jeff Stern was a panelist at a May 11 Boston Bar Association program called "Medical Malpractice: Emerging Issues in Apology, Disclosure and Peer Review." The program included discussion of the impact in medical malpractice cases of institutional policies on apology and medical-error disclosure, and peer-review and privilege issues. Jeff offered a perspective based on his long experience handling and mediating medical malpractice cases.

May 10, 2010 -
Title Withheld

SRBC's Jeff Stern and Alisa Hacker recently won a victory for the beneficiaries of an estate seeking to defeat a substantial claim for attorneys' fees.

A man in his 80s died while a resident in a nursing home. His second wife was the executrix of a modest estate. The will provided that the estate "poured over" into a previously funded trust of which the sole beneficiaries were the decedent's two children by his first wife.

The executrix's attorney petitioned for probate and prepared a Massachusetts estate tax return, which reflected a tax due of just under $33,000.

An attorney for the decedent's children realized that the tax was paid erroneously, as a closely held stock in the estate should have been discounted for minority interest, and the executrix's lawyer failed to use the alternative valuation date for other securities, which had declined in value in the six months since the man's death.

As a result of the errors, the children lost confidence in the ability of the executrix's attorney; a second lawyer was engaged to prepare a proposed first and final account. The account was presented to the children for assent. Lawyer No. 2 offered that the executrix would waive a fee if the children assented to the proposed first account, insisting on a release and indemnification of lawyer No. 1.

The children were reluctant to sign, believing they had incomplete information; in particular, there was a refusal to release financial information about the trust, inextricably connected to the estate.

At that point, the objectors engaged the undersigned, who prepared a number of objections to the account, including the assertion that attorneys' fees paid to both executrix's lawyers were excessive and duplicative.

Subsequently, the executrix hired a third attorney, who filed an equity action in Probate & Family Court, as well as a similar action in the Superior Court, seeking the return of the closely held stock, whic

October 26, 2009 -
Jean Musiker to Present at ADR Conference

On October 26, SRBC partner Jean Musiker will be a panelist at the first of what is to be an annual conference on Alternative Dispute Resolution and the Law, sponsored by Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education. Jean will join other local attorneys and mediators on a panel discussing “What Lawyers and Neutrals Love/Hate About Each Other.”

Jean chairs SRBC's Employment Law group, and also serves as a mediator, arbitrator and independent investigator.

For more information and to register, follow the link below.

May 26, 2009 -
Article Cites Natasha Lisman's International Human Rights Work
In a recent article on the Miller-McCune magazine website, Ken Stier writes about the groundbreaking pro bono work of the International Senior Lawyers Project, of which SRBC partner Natasha Lisman is a member. Describing ISLP's ability to call upon the particular passions and expertise of its volunteers, Stier cites Natasha's work with the Moscow-based International Protection Centre, which has brought nearly 200 cases against the Russian government in the European Court of Human Rights.

February 12, 2009 -
First Circuit: Court, Not Arbitrator, Must Decide Challenge to Arbitration Clause
SRBC's Natasha Lisman and Bill Benson discuss a recent First Circuit decision, Awuah v. Coverall North America, Inc. (Jan. 23, 2009), which holds that even where parties have agreed to arbitrate disputes and to give the arbitrator power to rule on his own jurisdiction, a party's argument that arbitration would be too costly, and thus an illusory remedy, should be heard by a court, not the arbitrator.

January 26, 2009 -
Winning Arbitration Plaintiff Recovers Statutory Attorney's Fees
The Massachusetts Appeals Court recently upheld an arbitrator's award of attorney's fees to a prevailing plaintiff under the state's public construction bond statute, even where the parties' arbitration agreement did not authorize such an award. SRBC's Bill Benson analyzes the decision in a new Law Alert.