Thomas J. Stipanowich

Academic Director and Professor of Law
Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution
Pepperdine University - School of Law
24255 Pacific Coast Highway
Malibu, CA 90263

Phone: 310-506-4655
Fax: 310-506-4437
Email: thomas.stipanowich@pepperdine.edu
Other URL http://law.pepperdine.edu

Professor Stipanowich brings to Pepperdine distinguished credentials as a scholar, practitioner, and leader in the field of commercial arbitration and dispute resolution. As President and CEO of the International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution (the CPR Institute) from 2001-2006, he led an international nonprofit coalition, including many of the world's leading corporate general counsels, senior attorneys, judges and scholars spearheading innovation and promoting excellence in public and private dispute resolution. A frequent speaker and trainer, he has conducted training and educational programs on negotiation and conflict management topics to leading law firms, organizations, and corporations such as General Electric, Shell Oil, General Mills, Siemens, Georgia Pacific, FMC Technologies, Exelon and British American Tobacco. He led the Institute's efforts to promote mediation in Europe and China, including the creation of the U.S.- China Business Mediation Center. He also created CPR's Corporate Counsel Roundtable and recently piloted the creation of the first extensive integrated training program on conflict management with a major international law firm. He remains on the Board of CPR.

MEMBER: 1999 Honorary Member

Background Professor Stipanowich is co-author of a new book and set of teaching materials for law schools on dispute resolution, Resolving Disputes: Theory and Practice for Lawyers (Aspen 2005). He has co-authored two of the leading books on commercial arbitration law and practice, including Federal Arbitration Law: Agreements, Awards and Remedies (Little, Brown & Co./Aspen 1994) a fivevolume treatise cited by the U.S. Supreme Court and many other federal and state courts. As the Director of the CPR Commission on the Future of Arbitration and the CPR/Hewlett Professor of Law, he edited an extensive set of guidelines, Commercial Arbitration at Its Best: Successful Strategies for Business Users (2001). His many articles have appeared in the Northwestern, Boston University, Wisconsin, Iowa and Indiana law reviews and numerous other periodicals. He played an advisory role in national efforts at statutory reform (the Uniform Arbitration Act and Uniform Mediation Act), served as chief drafter of a protocol for consumer ADR programs, and played an important role in the development of the leading construction and securities ADR rules and policies. He has looked very closely at practices surrounding business arbitration and mediation and recently authored a major study on the growth and impact of ADR for the Journal of Empirical Legal Research. Professor Stipanowich served as a Public Member and Chair of the Securities Industry Conference on Arbitration (1997-2004), on the Board of Directors of the American Arbitration Association, and Chair of the Advisory Committee to the Global Disputes Research Center. In 2000 he was also the inaugural Hoellering International Visiting Scholar at the AAA.

Professor Stipanowich founded a non-profit court-connected mediation center (still in operation). He helped establish programs for mediation of circuit and district court matters of all kinds; worked with peer mediation courses in the public schools; and created and implemented mediator training and accreditation programs and ethical standards.

He was the first non-British member of Companions of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, a Fellow of the American College of Construction Lawyers, and a Founding Fellow of the American College of Commercial Arbitrators. He was recently selected as one of 500 outstanding lawyers in America in a survey conducted by a new legal magazine, Lawdragon.

Education/Training B.A., highest honors, University of Illinois, 1974
M.A., University of Illinois, 1976
J.D., magna cum laude, University of Illinois, 1980