J.P. Duffy welcomes Serena Lee, the new President and CEO of the International Institute for Conflict Prevention & Resolution (CPR), for an engaging discussion about CPR's foundational principles, its unique origin as an organization dedicated to helping corporations, and the influential role it plays in the global arbitration community. Serena explains CPR’s inner workings, delves into recent case statistics, and shares her vision for CPR’s future.

----more----

Transcript:

Intro: Hello and welcome to Arbitral Insights, a podcast series brought to you by our international arbitration practice lawyers here at Reed Smith. I'm Peter Rosher, Global Head of Reed Smith's International Arbitration Practice. I hope you enjoy the industry commentary, insights and anecdotes we share with you in the course of this series, wherever in the world you are. If you have any questions about any of the topics discussed, please do contact our speakers. And with that, let's get started. 

J.P.: Welcome back to the next episode of Arbitral Insights, in which we'll discuss the International Institute for Conflict Resolution, known in the legal community as CPR, with Serena Lee, who's CPR's new president and CEO. I'm J.P. Duffy. I'm an international arbitration partner based in New York that acts as both counsel and arbitrator and international arbitration seated around the world under a variety of governing laws and arbitral rules. I'm qualified in New York, England, and Wales, and the DIFC courts in Dubai, where I previously practiced. I also have the good fortune to be listed on the CPR arbitrator roster, which is called the Panel of Distinguished Neutrals. With me today, as I mentioned, is Serena K. Lee. Serena is a lawyer qualified in New York who previously practiced on the West Coast. Before joining CPR, Serena served as the Vice President of Operations for JAMS in San Francisco, where she managed three resolution centers, San Francisco, Santa Rosa, and Seattle, and oversaw approximately 85 neutrals. And before that, Serena was vice president with the AAA in the construction and commercial divisions, first in Seattle and then San Francisco. So as you can tell, Serena brings a wealth of experience and perspective to her new role and to the audience. And we're thrilled to have her because she's a very recent addition to CPR. She's going to give us some updates on everything that CPR has been up to and what she plans for CPR to do. Before we begin, let me just give some brief background information about CPR itself for those that aren't as familiar with it. CPR was established in 1977 in New York by James F. Henry to help businesses find better ways to resolve commercial disputes. CPR does this through the CPR Institute, which acts as a think tank and a thought leader, and through the CPR Institute's subsidiary, CPR Dispute Resolution Services, which provides dispute resolution and prevention services to users, including the administration of CPR's arbitration rules. CPR has a unique origin because it was established by in-house counsel from Fortune 100 companies to bring together corporate counsel and their law firm clients to collaborate on ways to reduce dispute resolution costs by finding alternatives to court litigation. Today, CPR has a membership community that comprises corporate counsel, law firms, academics, and neutrals. Over the decades, this unique membership community has produced a variety of thought leadership pieces, and innovative yet practical rules for arbitration and mediation, as well as the CPR pledge, which more than 4,000 companies and 1,500 law firms have signed to show their commitment to considering ADR for the speed resolution. So as you can tell, CPR, while it is an arbitral administrator, does a lot more and is relatively unique in the space in the way that it operates. So with that, let's turn to Serena a bit, because I want to hear from her about everything that CPR has been up to. Serena, welcome. 

Serena: Thank you so much, JP. Pleasure to be here. Good.

J.P.: Well, we're so glad you could join us. And I think, you know, one of the first things that our listeners would love to know is, how many cases did CPR administer in 2023? 

Serena: Well, thanks for the questions, J.P., and you're right. I think often people are interested in the number of cases CPR administered. So CPR Dispute Resolution, our arbitral provider subsidiary, administers cases, including complex commercial arbitrations, and offers a number of related services such as mediation, fund holding, appointment services, and others. Our first rule set ever published was actually a non-administered arbitration, and we offer services to help parties through those ad hoc processes. So there's really not a straightforward answer to your question because it depends on how we dissect the data. Oftentimes, parties don't tell us if they are using CPR for their ad hoc arbitrations. Sometimes the parties will come to us for only parts of the services they're seeking, such as for fund holding or for appointment or for conflicts checks. So I don't have a specific number of how many cases CPR has administered based on the data I just shared with you. But I can tell you that CPR dispute resolution handles fewer cases each year than the AAA or JAMS. But because we're smaller, our team is oftentimes very high contact and responsive to questions. So I guess it's all good. 

J.P.: That's a great answer. Now, it highlights a point, too, that I think is pretty interesting. What year, if I remember correctly, CPR introduced administered rules in sometime around 2010. Is that correct? 

Serena: Close. 2013 was when our first set of administered arbitration weeks were located. 

J.P.: Okay, so Serena, so the administer rules got introduced in 2013, and if I've understood you correctly, CPR still gets used relatively frequently by parties, or the CPR rules do, for non-administered cases. 

Serena: Correct. 

J.P.: What's the breakdown for administered cases between domestic and international cases? 

Serena: The majority of the cases that we are aware of were domestic, but we also have received international cases. They're devoted to certain regions, such as in Canada and in Brazil, being maybe our two most prominent areas where we have received international matters. 

J.P.: Interesting. And are there particular industries that feature more prominently in the cases than others? 

Serena: Well, from the industries that we've seen in the past few years, that they are, as many providers also experience, they come from a wide variety of industries and sectors. Employment, healthcare and life sciences, energy, oil and gas, accounting and financial service are some of our largest caseloads. We also see franchise, insurance, technology, sports law, construction, professional fees. I'm rattling off some of the ones that come to mind. Of course, straight commercial matters as well. And we do see sometimes unfair competition matters come in as well. 

J.P.: Interesting. So it's really a pretty broad range of disputes that CPR helps administer. 

Serena: Correct. 

J.P.: That's great. Now, how much of that is driven by CPR's membership? And it may be worth it when you answer that just to give a little bit of background on that and to explain how the CPR membership process works and maybe talk a bit about who some of the CPR members are. So to probably take this time to distinguish between the CPR Institute, which I'm going to refer to as the Institute, and CPR Dispute Services. So the Institute, of course, as you had mentioned, J.P., was started in 1977. And that is the think tank or the thought leadership portion of CPR and essentially why we exist. Now, CPR dispute resolution was created some three years ago to help parties who were interested in administered arbitrations or other ADR services to help administer those. So they were created as a subsidiary under the Institute to do so. There is a division between the Institute and the work that the Institute does and administration and dispute resolution services that CPR Dispute Resolution provides. Those who are interested in coming into the Institute as members of the thought leadership portion of CPR join as members and they can join as individuals, they can join as firms or as corporations. We have some of the largest organizations to the smallest companies in America who are interested in joining CPR Institute because they're interested in being part of the dialogue and workshopping ideas and solutions to issues they're seeing out in their business landscape. And law firms who also join as well as academics who want to contribute and also listen to what the businesses are asking for and what they're trying to resolve to make sure that the processes are efficient, that they're fair, that they are practical in a business context, and so forth. So I make mention of that because the Institute has very little to do with the case management. The only thing that the institute provides for CPR dispute resolution are the rules and the protocols are promulgated within the institute are then pushed over to the DR or the Dispute Services to issue out and to use. So those who file cases with dispute resolution services have no real interaction with the members. I hope that's clear. 

J.P.: It is clear. Yeah. And I think there's a lot to unpack there that's really fascinating and different than a lot of other institutions. So let me just take that in pieces if I could. So the Institute has, that's what has the 4,000 members and the 1,500 law firm members. Is that right? 

Serena: Yes. 

J.P.: Okay. What are some examples of say fortune 500 companies, if you don't mind sharing that are members of the Institut