LAURA A. KASTER

Laura A. Kaster is the 2018 recipient of the Justice Marie L. Garibaldi ADR Inn of Court Richard K. Jeydel Award for ADR Excellence and the recipient of the New Jersey Bar’s Boskey Award for the 2014 Distinguished Neutral of the year. She brings to her work as a neutral over 30 years of experience with arbitration, mediation and settlement negotiation in a wide variety of complex commercial and intellectual property disputes.

​Arbitration

Ms. Kaster is a Fellow of the College of Commercial Arbitrators, a member of the Executive Committees of the National Academy of Distinguished Neutrals and New Jersey Academy of Mediators and Arbitrators, a Fellow of CIArb, and a member of the Tech List of the Silicon Valley Arbitration and Mediation Panel. She serves as an arbitrator dealing with a wide range of intellectual property complex commercial, employment, securities, and partnership disputes for:

• American Arbitration Association
• CCA/IMI/Pepperdine School of Law/Straus Institute International Task Force on Mixed Mode Dispute Resolution
• International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution (CPR) Panels of Distinguished Neutrals and IP/Technology
  Panel, E-Discovery Panel, T, New Jersey at Large ADR Panel, Trademark Panel
• FINRA

​Mediation

​Ms. Kaster has been selected for the Master Mediator Panel of the American Arbitration Association. She has been accepted as a member of the global panel for CEDR (Center for Effective Dispute Resolution- a premier worldwide ADR provider and is a CEDR accredited mediator and has been certified as a mediator by the International Mediation Institute (IMI). She is a founding Board Member of the New Jersey Academy of Mediators and Arbitrators and the Executive Committee of the National Association of Distinguished Neutrals. She also serves as a mediator for:

• American Arbitration Association
• CPR
• Roster of Mediators for Civil, General Equity and Probate cases for the New Jersey state court system
• Roster of Mediators for the Commercial Division Alternative Dispute Resolution Program for the Supreme Court of New York
• Roster of NJ Bankruptcy Mediators

Dispute Resolution Organizations

​Ms. Kaster is Chair of the NYSBA Dispute Resolution Section 2020-21, was President of the Justice Marie L. Garibaldi ADR Inn of Court 2015-17, and Chair of the NJSBA Dispute Resolution Section 2011-2013; a member of the NJ Supreme Court Committee on Complementary Dispute Resolution 2013-2020; NJ Supreme Court Committee on Mediator Standards 2017-  and a member of CCA/IMI/Pepperdine School of Law/Straus Institute International Task Force on Mixed Mode Dispute Resolution. She is Co-Editor in Chief of Dispute Resolution Lawyer, the Journal of the NYSBA Dispute Resolution Section and a member of its executive committee. She has been on the Diversity Task Force of CPR since 2001. 

Teaching, Speaking, and Publishing

Ms. Kaster has presented at CCA Annual Meetings, Annual ABA Dispute Resolution Meetings, NYSBA Annual Dispute Resolution Meeting, the New Jersey State Bar annual meetings and ADR Day, the New Jersey State Bar Annual meeting in, for PLI, and for NJAPM in 2012, the Garibaldi Inn of Court, and for various corporations and law firms. She has presented webinars for the American Arbitration Association, ABA and CPR. She has published widely; a list of her articles and book chapters may be found at www.AppropriateDisputeSolutions.com.

Experience In-House and Law Firm

As chief litigation counsel for AT&T Corporation, she was responsible for disputes relating to complex supplier, shareholder actions, outsourcing, employment, appeals, and major customer disputes and international arbitrations. She also was responsible for the resolution of AT&T’s claims against 50 insurance carriers arising out of the damage to the World Trade Center on 9/11. 

As counsel for AT&T Labs, she was involved in a wide variety of patent, trademark and intellectual property disputes focusing on audio and video compression. From 2007- 2020 she was advisor to the Multimedia Patent Trust, which holds video compression patents.

Prior to her work at AT&T, as a partner at Jenner & Block, where she worked for over twenty years Ms. Kaster handled a wide variety of complex disputes and developed special expertise in disputes involving class actions, intellectual property, attorney’s fees, appellate litigation.

Education

Ms. Kaster holds a BA from Tufts University (Political Science); and a JD, magna cum laude from Boston University Law School, where she was Notes Editor for the Law Review and recipient of the Melville M. Bigelow Award "for the greatest promise as a teacher and scholar in the law". Following law school, she was a law clerk to then Chief Judge Frank M. Coffin of the Federal Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

Ms. Kaster is listed in “Who’s Who Legal": Mediation 2017-2020.

More information is available at www.AppropriateDisputeSolutions.com.