Michael E. Dickstein has taught negotiation, mediation, and Alternative Dispute Resolution at Stanford Law School since 2005, and has been a principal in Dickstein Dispute Resolution, helping resolve complex disputes across North America, since the mid-1990’s.

In addition to teaching at Stanford, Mr. Dickstein has taught introductory and advanced classes on mediation, negotiation and ADR worldwide (including in Canada, the United States, China, France, Germany, England, Ireland, Australia, Trinidad and Tobago, Bermuda, the Bahamas, and St. Lucia).  He has taught in conjunction with such institutions as the University of San Francisco (as an adjunct professor in the MBA program), Shantou University in China, and U.C. Berkeley Law School.  He has taught senior executives (including CEOs, CFOs, COO’s), board members, senior military officers, trial and appellate judges, legislators, consultants, managers, lawyers,  arbitrators, mediators, commissioners, barristers, solicitors, ombudspeople, salespeople, bankers, HR professionals, union leaders and members, deans, educators, teachers, academics, actors, engineers,  landscape architects, technicians, programmers, accountants, auditors, students (including J.D., MBA, PhD, engineering, undergraduate, and high school), secretaries, receptionists, elected officials, bureaucrats, dentists, lords, knights, and others.

In his dispute resolution practice, Mr. Dickstein has mediated and successfully settled cases on a wide variety of topics (including class action, commercial, employment, contract, intellectual property, franchise, real estate, personal injury, discrimination, malpractice, construction defect, and defamation issues).  Mr. Dickstein has mediated more than 700 class actions across North America (including in New York, Toronto, Chicago, Boston, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Montreal, Detroit, Buffalo, Miami, Atlanta, Nashville, Dallas, Houston, Minneapolis, Columbus, Kansas City, Portland, Denver, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego and Orange County), with class sizes ranging from fewer than 100 class members to more than 470,000. These actions have included wage, consumer, discrimination, employment, stock drop, retirement and employment issues, and ranged across industries including the financial, retail, technology, government, restaurant, transportation, energy, medical, customer service, security, sales, academic, casino, gig economy, and service industries.

Examples of Mr. Dickstein’s work include: mediating a series of more than 20 interconnected wage and hour class actions, with over a billion dollars in dispute; mediating a discrimination class action, involving a university’s structuring of its sports program, and provision of facilities and opportunities for women; facilitating contract negotiations between the theater actors of Canada and its major theaters; mediating the intellectual property, tangible property, contract, and discrimination issues between a well-known dance company and its artistic director; mediating an international trademark dispute involving the wine labels of a leading American and a leading European wine producer; mediating the dissolution of a leading medical partnership; being chosen to help mediate, arbitrate, and allocate settlement funds with respect to thousands of sex and race discrimination claims against several major financial institutions; mediating claims between one of the world’s leading automobile manufacturers and its franchisees; and facilitating the discussions between a nationwide non-profit, its CFO, its regional advisory board, its regional executive director, and its regional staff.

Mr. Dickstein has also presided over appeals of small claims actions and settlement conferences, as a judge pro tem for the San Francisco Superior Court, and small claims trials, for the San Francisco and Alameda Courts.

Mr. Dickstein was formerly a partner in one of North America’s leading law firms (Heller, Ehrman), and earned his A.B. from Harvard College in 1981, and J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1985.  For more information on Mr. Dickstein, please see www.DicksteinDisputeResolution.com.

Employment

• Principal, Dickstein Dispute Resolution/ MEDiate, 1992—Present
• Adjunct Professor, University of San Francisco (MBA), 2003—2004
• Lecturer, UC Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall), 1990
• Partner/Associate, Heller Ehrman et al., 1985—1992