Profile

Robert M. Smith brings to mediation years of experience as a mediator, as well as years of commercial trial and litigation experience; an understanding of what a judge, jury or arbitrator may do; journalistic experience in careful listening; a bottom-line, realistic focus from business and corporate involvement; and years of negotiating experience. He is experienced in the prompt, and sometimes imaginative, resolution of difficult, complex commercial disputes.

He brings to mediation courtroom experience, federal and state; litigation experience, domestic and international; recognition as a barrister, Chartered Arbitrator and Registered Mediator in England; the research and academic experience of an adjunct law professor who has taught international arbitration and the arbitration of intellectual property disputes; and experience with diverse commercial litigation matters in many overseas jurisdictions. He is, for example, a member of the mediation panel of the Centre de Médiation et d'Arbitrage de Paris.

He has had more than 20 years of commercial litigation and trial experience consisting of practice at: Heller, Ehrman, White & McAuliffe in San Francisco; Senior Litigation Counsel, Bank of America, responsible for overseas litigation worldwide; principal of his own commercial litigation firm, which included as its clients 36 financial institutions; Special Assistant to the Attorney General of the United States during the Carter administration; and Assistant US Attorney. He is the author of ADR for Financial Institutions (West, 2nd ed. 1998, 1200 pp.), and is a full-time neutral. His languages include French, German and Spanish.