Victoria Pynchon
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After a 25-year career in complex commercial litigation and trial work, Victoria Pynchon, author of the Settle It Now Negotiation Blog and founder of the IP ADR Blog, became a full-time attorney-mediator. Ms. Pynchon received her LL.M. in Conflict Resolution from the prestigious Straus Institute and her law degree, Order of the Coif, from University of California at Davis King Hall School of Law .
Ms. Pynchon mediates the same type of complex commercial case she litigated for more than a quarter century with such firms as the Philadelphia-based Pepper, Hamilton; the Los Angeles-based Buchalter, Nemer and the San Francisco-based Hancock, Rothert & Bunshoft (recently merged with Duane Morris) She is a neutral for the Southern California ADR firm, Judicate West and serves as a mediator on her own specialty ADR panel, Settle It Now Dispute Resolution Services.
Ms. Pynchon's broad buisness background gives her commercial mediation practice unusual depth in industry practices, management and finance. She spent her commercial litigation career litigating "bet the company" antitrust, unfair competition, intellectual property and insurance coverage actions. She has also prosecuted and defended nationwide consumer class actions and litigated securities fraud and professional liability actions. Her clients have been in the garment and import-export industries, as well as in the health care, entertainment, banking and finance, manufacturing and insurance industries.
Ms. Pynchon's credentials include extensive academic and practical teaching experience at the undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate levels, including more than a dozen years of teaching experience with the National Institute of Trial Advocacy.
Since commencing a full-time neutral practice, Ms. Pynchon has taught negotiation skills at the Summer Entrepreneurship Institute, Anderson School of Management, U.C.L.A., at the Straus Institute as an Adjunct Faculty member and as a guest lecturer at the University of Southern California School of Law.
Ms. Pynchon has given her continuing education Negotiation Seminar to prominent international law firms located in the greater Los Angeles area, including O'Melveny & Myers; Mayer, Brown & Platt; Katten, Muchin; Squire, Sanders & Dempsey; Musick, Peller; Heller, Ehrman, Rutan and Tucker, among others.
Ms. Pynchon has published widely in the field of dispute resolution in both the academic and professional press. She is a frequent contributor to and columnist (the Human Factor) for The Complete Lawyer and a Featured Blogger at Mediate.com.
Ms. Pynchon blogs here at writes about Intellectual Property ADR issues at the IP ADR Blog, which she maintains with her colleagues at IP ADR Services.
Some of her recent professional publications include:
Why Lawyers are Unhappy, The Complete Lawyer, Vol. IV, Issue One
Take Steps to Ensure that Mediated Settlement Agreements Can Be Enforced (with Deborah Rothman) The Los Angeles Daily Journal, October 20, 2006, reprinted at Mediate.com
Ten Settlement Conference Traps for the Unwary, Douglas County Bar Association Newsletter, November 2006
Some of her recent professional presentations include:
Settlement Techniques that Give You the Winning Edge, Pincus Professional Education Seminars, Los Angeles, November 13, 2007 (soon to be available as a home study course).
IP Litigation and Dispute Resolution Conference Conference: IP ADR in the USA: Big Ideas and Fresh Perspectives, London, England, October 2007.
ALFA Annual 2007 Labor and Employment Seminar: Point-Counterpoint: the Pros and Cons of ADR with DHL Senior Legal Counsel Joshua Frank and San Diego Employment Litigator James M. Peterson, October 2007 Half Moon Bay, California.
Ms. Pynchon's short fiction, literary non-fiction and poetry has been extensively published in the small University Press.
