Negotiating Bankruptcy
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My favo
rite local bankruptcy mediators 
Ben Siegel of Buchalter (left)
former bankruptcy judge Herb Katz (right)
Bankruptcy mediation catches on nationwide
A decade ago, there were only a handful of mediation programs in bankruptcy courts.
Long associated with family law disputes, mediation programs were slow to catch on in complex business litigation, including bankruptcy cases.
But that's changing.
More than two-thirds of the 90 bankruptcy courts have mediation available, according to Robert Niemic, senior attorney at the Federal Judicial Center. Even more offer some other form of alternative dispute resolution, such as judicial settlement conferences.
In the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California, more than 3,800 cases have been referred to mediation since 1995. About 64 percent of those cases were resolved through settlements.
To keep costs down, the first day of mediation is free. Parties choose from a list of 200 attorneys and non-attorneys, such as accountants and financial experts, who volunteer as mediators.
Chief Bankruptcy Court Judge Barry Russell, who launched the mediation program in 1995, said that most cases settle in a day, producing major cost savings for both the court and the parties involved.
Biography
Attorney-mediator Victoria Pynchon is a panelist with the Southern California ADR firm Judicate West. Ms. Pynchon was awarded her LL.M Degree in Dispute Resolution from the Straus Institute in May of 2006, after 25 years of complex commercial litigation practice, with sub-specialties in intellectual property, securities fraud, antitrust, insurance coverage, consumer class actions and all types of business torts and contract disputes. During her two years of full-time neutral practice, she has co-mediated both mandatory and voluntary settlement conferences with Los Angeles Superior Court Judges Alexander Williams, III and Victoria Chaney. As a result of her work with Judge Chaney in the Complex Court at Central Civil West, Ms. Pynchon has gained significant experience mediating construction defect litigation. Ms. Pynchon received her J.D., Order of the Coif, from the U.C. Davis School of Law.
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