Law School Professors, Alumni Join Task Force on Commercial Litigation
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New York, February 22, 2012—John C. Coffee Jr., Adolf A. Berle Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, another professor, and three alumni will serve as members of the newly formed Task Force on Commercial Litigation in the 21st Century.
Chief Judge of the State of New York Jonathan Lippman announced the creation of the task force during his Feb. 14 State of the Judiciary address at the Court of Appeals. The Task Force is seeking to maintain and improve the quality of justice in complex commercial litigation in New York's courts in order to assure that New York continues to attract major litigation and remains the preferred forum for sophisticated litigants. It will be co-chaired by the Hon. Judith S. Kaye, a former chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals who is now of counsel at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, and Martin Lipton, a founding partner at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.
The task force comprises a distinguished group of 28 current and retired judges, commercial litigators, academics, including Coffee, and business leaders. Its members also include three Columbia Law School graduates: Roberta A. Kaplan ’91, a partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; Ronald Minkoff ’80, a partner at Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz; and Jeremy R. Feinberg ’95, who will serve as counsel to the task force in his position as special counsel for ethics at New York’s Office of Court Administration. Feinberg is an adjunct professor at Columbia Law School, where he teaches a course on professional responsibility.
According to a news release issued by the New York State Unified Court System, “the new Task Force will examine how to better control dockets to benefit users and the business community, how to manage the flow of cases and decisions more effectively using non-judicial personnel and alternative dispute resolution within the courts, and how to engage more closely with the academic community and the Bar to ensure that judges and court staff benefit from the most up-to-date information and concepts.”
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