Related Professionals
PRINCETON, NJ, March 10, 2015 – Suzanne M. McSorley, a Shareholder with Stevens & Lee, presented a seminar on alternate dispute resolution for construction disputes for the New Jersey Institute of Continuing Legal Education. The event was held February 28, 2015, in New Brunswick, NJ.
The program was designed to update litigators, arbitrators and mediators on the latest developments in arbitration law and procedures, with best practices in evaluating cases and preparing them for mediation. Ms. McSorley addressed preparation for mediation and the cognitive obstacles that advocates and litigants need to overcome to avoid settlement “mistakes” and also addressed recently developed dispute resolution techniques and project delivery methods that are designed to speed dispute resolution time – or to eliminate disputes altogether.
Ms. McSorley is a construction lawyer, concentrating her practice on drafting and negotiating contracts relating to construction projects and resolving, through negotiation, mediation, arbitration and litigation, construction-related disputes primarily for clients in the pharmaceutical, manufacturing and health care industries. In addition to representing parties in disputes, Ms. McSorley has served as a mediation neutral since 1996 when she was among the first 60 mediators selected by the assignment judges in the Superior Court of New Jersey for the court-annexed mediation panel. She has extensive experience drafting and negotiating contracts for projects as complex as “green field” pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities and hospitals, as well as for routine laboratory and office renovations and fit-ups.
Ms. McSorley is a frequent speaker on topics relating to dispute resolution and construction law, presenting programs in the last year for the Bankruptcy Court of the District of New Jersey, the Mercer County American Inn of Court, the Marie Garibaldi American Inn of Court, the New Jersey Institute of Continuing Legal Education and the American Bar Association Forum on Construction Law. She has served as a mediation skills trainer since 2004. She is an editor (with Roland Nikles, Steven Reisman and Richard Tyler) of Construction Defects, a publication of the ABA Forum on Construction Law and most recently is the author of “Take Full Advantage of the Opportunity to Mediate: Prepare, Don’t Just Show Up,” an article published in September 2014 in Under Construction.
She has a J.D. from Columbia Law School, where she was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, and an A.B., cum laude, from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
