In our field, there are many more meetings, conventions, conferences, workshops and trainings than there is work. It’s impossible to attend them all and it’s sometimes hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. Three instances of real “wheat” are coming up that should be on the short list for corporate end-users of conflict resolution tools, and for the attorneys who counsel them.
The CPR Annual Meeting takes place in New York on January 14-15. When I was at CPR, this was a coveted event available only to members. Now it is a coveted event available to everybody. It is the preeminent convening of corporate end-users of ADR, just as the ABA Dispute Resolution Section meeting is the biggest gathering of ADR practitioners. To give a sense of the corporate-oriented nature of the discourse, this year’s CPR speakers include representatives from Duke Energy, Abbott Labs, GE Commercial Finance, ITT, Nestlé, CIGNA, FMC Technologies and GE Oil & Gas. Also speaking will be Ken Feinberg, reps of CEDR and AAA, and many of the biggest and most influential attorneys in the practice. This is obviously the place to be in mid-January.
The next month, in Paris (assuming the Metro strike is settled by then), the ICC will host the aptly-titled “Managing Risks and Getting Results: How to Use Mediation Effectively in International Business Disputes.” This, too, is corporate-directed, presenting hard data on the business value of a systems approach to B2B conflicts. The intended audience is the business conflict manager and those who counsel that office. Co-sponsors include the ABA Sections of International Law and Dispute Resolution, and JAMS. And once again it is a peer-to-peer discussion, with presenters from General Electric, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Akzo Nobel, and others talking to other corporate managers about business efficiencies presented by competent management of business disputes. If you do business in Europe or have clients who do, sending them along to Cours Albert 1er for a one-day session on February 11 couldn’t be a faux pas.
I’m unfortunately not going to be in Paris on February 11. Instead I’ll be at the glamorous Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington learning more about how to be a better arbitrator. This is the ABA’s 5th Annual Arbitration Training Instiutute and I just love the Faculty: Zee Claiborne, Homer La Rue, Michael Lewis, Linda Singer, John Phillips, Wayne Thorpe, and a bunch of others, including prominently my former boss and prized friend Tom Stipanowich. How you gonna keep ’em down in Paree after they’ve seen the Omni?