Thursday is business meeting day. There are a number of arbitration and mediation colleagues I have planned to meet while in New York. After all, this trip is also about keeping in touch with the professional side of my American self.
Lela Love
My first encounter is with Prof. Lela Love at Benjamin Cardozo Law School. We have never met before and have been introduced by my mediation trainer in Berlin, Christian Hartwig. Lela welcomes me in her office and we have a little more than half an hour to get to know one another. We share a few stories on mediation. Before we part, she gives me a book that she has recently edited: ‘Stories Mediators Tell’. I am pretty sure that I will comment a little further on this book as our journey takes us further through the USA.
Ank Santens and team
My next meeting is all about arbitration. I meet Ank Santens of White & Case and three of her colleagues, Jennifer Glasser, John Templeman and Felipe Nazar Pagani, on the 49th floor of a big tower on Broadway. Ank, who is Belgian, welcomes me to a lunch get-together with three other colleagues from her team who are American, Australian and Chilean. I share with them some of my insights on the German arbitration market and most importantly, to what degree a German style arbitration differs from a common law based arbitration.
Anna Tevini
Anna Tevini and I meet in a little coffee shop accross the street from her office. We were on opposing sides in an arbitration almost a decade ago, and have kept in touch, even though Anna has moved to New York five years ago. We talk about her work as an arbitration practicioner and investigations counsel at Sherman & Sterling’s New York office. That leads us as to why we are doing what we are doing. We find out that both of us originally wanted to join the foreign service and become diplomats. We both found, however, that the freedom of the legal profession was more important to us than the internationality of a diplomatic carreer.
Steven Thal and Florian von Eyb
I rush to my last meeting that day which is with Steven Thal and Florian von Eyb at Phillips Nizer, a medium sized New York law firm. Steven and Florian are both advising clients in doing transatlantic business between Germany and the USA. We talk about the differences between the legal industries in the USA and Germany, especially about the fact that our US colleagues like no others in the world master the art of creating a demand for certain legal services, thereby building entire legal industries. Was it that what the law was meant for?
Christian Alberti
Christian Alberti and I get together one day later. He is the Assistant Vice President of ICDR, the American Arbitration Association’s International Centre for Dispute Resolution, and has been working with the institution for over 10 years. Christian takes me to an Irish pub on Stone Street, and while we sit outside with a pint of Brooklyn Seasonal and some fish and chips, he tells me how he started this career at ICDR following an LL.M. degree at Tulane Law School and a special arbitration training in Australia.
When I look back at all those meetings, particularly one aspect strikes me: Most of the people come from different countries, many of them multi-nationals and/or living in multi-national marriages, raising their children in at least two different languages, all having adapted to the New York way of life and mastering intercultural communication while safeguarding their cultural identity. This is why I am fascinated by international arbitration and dispute resolution.
