Fordham Law School’s Dispute Resolution Society launched its fall campaign in outstanding fashion reaching the finals in two prestigious competitions in New York this month.
The 2L DRS arbitration team of Alexandra Lane, Praatika Prasad, and Lauren Riddell placed second in the third annual Judith S. Kaye Arbitration Competition at the New York International Arbitration Center. Riddell received Best Advocate honors. 3L Andrew Dunn, the DRS arbitration editor, and Fordham Law Adjunct Professor David Gallo, the faculty advisor for DRS, served as coaches.
The 2L DRS negotiation team of Kayla Giampaolo and Brian Fried also finished second in the regional rounds of the ABA Law Student Negotiation Competition at St. John’s University Law School. The team, coached by 3L Joseph Milano, has been invited to participate in the national rounds of the competition, which will take place at the ABA mid-winter meeting in February.
“One of the trademarks of our DRS teams is they work incredibly hard preparing for these competitions,” Professor Jacqueline Nolan-Haley said. “These students give up many of their weekends and nights to make Fordham look good.”
Nolan-Haley praised the efforts of the coaches, who used their arbitration and competition experience to prepare the students, and the DRS teams’ classmates who helped moot the competitors.
In the case of the DRS arbitration team, the teammates who did not compete in the Judith S. Kaye event played a major role in the team’s success. Natasha Butalia helped write the team’s brief and Jared Dub, an alternate witness, helped Riddell prepare, on two days’ notice, for extra witness roles, once the team learned it could have only three students participate.
Riddell played five witness roles in a case involving a dispute over whether a fracking company’s actions on a Pennsylvania family’s farm resulted in property damage and a property owner’s health ailments. Riddell played a fracking expert and the sick property owner for the claimant’s case, a CEO and expert for the respondent, and, in the final round, a person approached by the CEO. Riddell credited Dub, who had prepared to play the CEO and the respondent’s expert witness, for his instruction on what she should focus on and also the potential weaknesses of the witnesses.
“Jared was hugely important in our success,” Riddell said. “Technically I was not an advocate,” she added about her award, “but the Bar Association wanted to stress that witness prep is very important in arbitration.”