As a member of the California State Bar’s Committee on Mandatory Fee Arbitration, I will be speaking to the Long Beach Bar Association this week along with a panel of members of the Committee.  We will be conducting training for fee arbitrators, with co-panelists Doug Hull, Director of the State Bar’s Mandatory Fee Arbitration program, Lee Strauss, of NBC Universal and Patrick Maloney of the Maloney Law firm, both members of the Committee.  Each of us will draw upon our experiences as fee arbitrators – I serve on the Orange County Bar Association’s program.

Among the topics I will address are discovery and evidence in Mandatory Fee Arbitration.  In order to keep the fee arbitration process streamlined, discovery is limited.  Evidence is liberally admitted to facilitate client’s representing themselves.  I will also be discussing the use of findings in fee arbitration.  In my experience, fee arbitrators put significant effort into preparing findings, in part to help the parties make an informed decision about whether to pursue a trial de novo.  These training programs are very robust and I highly recommend these sessions if you are interested in fee arbitration.

About Carole J. Buckner

Carole J. Buckner is a Partner and General Counsel with Procopio in San Diego, California. She is an AV Peer Review Rated sole practitioner admitted to the California State Bar in 1984. She holds a BA from the University of California at Berkeley (1980) and a JD from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco (1984). She is available for consulting and legal advice in the field of legal ethics and issues involving professional responsibility, and the law of lawyering.