What’s a Court-Appointed Neutral

and

Might You Want to be One?

Monday, January 26, 2026 | 12pm

Please join us for this free webinar with moderator Angela Reddock-Wring, Esq. and Speakers Deborah Greenspan, Esq., Merril Hirsch, FCIArb, and Sidney Kanazawa, Esq.

Court-appointed neutrals (“special masters”) have been the subject of enormous interest in recent years.  In recent years, for example, the American Bar Association has adopted three resolutions suggesting Guidelines on their use, using “court-appointed neutrals” as a better and standard name, allowing for court-appointed neutrals to be used in bankruptcy proceedings; urging federal rule-makers to make some of these changes and state, local, tribal and territorial courts to adopt a model rule for court-appointed neutrals.  Over a dozen other organizations have joined in a number of these efforts.  States have started to adopt new approaches to making court-appointed neutrals more useful.  And the Academy of Court-Appointed Neutrals will be bringing a focus to these changes to California this coming year by holding its annual (March 11-14, 2026) at the International House in Berkeley, California.

These developments create new opportunities for ADR Professionals to use their skills to assist courts in meeting their most pressing needs.  In this program, you will:

• Learn about how and why the thinking on court-appointed neutrals has changed;

• Learn about what skills make for effective court-appointed neutrals and how you can go about becoming one;

• Learn about resources available to assist that process.

Upon registration, please note Zoom link information. Please contact [email protected] if you do not receive.

Thank you!

BIOS: 

ANGELA J. REDDOCK-WRIGHT is highly regarded across the state of California as a leading neutral in all employment and labor-related matters and Title IX sexual assault, hazing, and bullying cases. 

A licensed attorney for nearly 30 years, Reddock-Wright’s over-15-year tenure as an employment and labor law litigator and workplace and Title IX investigator set the stage for the opening of her own mediation and dispute-resolution practice, the Reddock Law Group, in 2011. Since then, she has mediated some of the most sensitive and high-profile cases involving private, public, and nonprofit sector employers and employees regarding issues of race, sex, gender, and disability, among others. Her empathetic demeanor and her drive to create healthier, thriving workplaces are apparent in every case she takes on.

In addition to Reddock-Wright’s employment and labor law expertise, she is also highly regarded for her experience in Title IX sexual assault, school tort, bullying, and hazing cases.  

In recent years, Reddock-Wright has been a go-to mediator, consultant, and trainer for issues relating to race and ethnicity, including cases and matters stemming from the death of George Floyd in 2020, rising employee activism, the #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo movements. As a result of her reputation and work in this area, Reddock-Wright was consulted by the Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) to assist in updating its member policies against sexual harassment.  

Reddock-Wright’s career contains a myriad of achievements, most notably her recent features by Best Lawyers and Super Lawyers for her career success stemming from her humble beginnings in Birmingham, Alabama and Compton, California. Reddock-Wright’s commitment to her work as a mediator and neutral is demonstrated by her deep engagement in the legal and ADR communities. This includes her time as president of the Southern California Mediation Association and her current role as an adjunct faculty member for the employment mediation clinic at the USC Gould School of Law, where she helps train, mentor, and inspire the next generation of attorneys, mediators, and ADR professionals. Reddock-Wright also is a past member of the Board of Trustees for the Los Angeles County Bar Association (LACBA) and currently serves on the Executive Committee of the LACBA Labor and Employment Section.   

Reddock-Wright has also shown a deep commitment to the larger community through her nonprofit and civic board service, including her time as a member of the Los Angeles Community College Board of Trustees, the State Board of Barbering and Cosmetology, the County of Los Angeles Small Business and Local Government Services Commissions, and the City of Los Angeles Transportation Commission.  

Reddock-Wright’s current nonprofit board service includes organizations such as the Los Angeles Urban League and the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. Her past nonprofit board service has included organizations such as Ability First (former Board Chair), the Los Angeles African American Women’s Public Policy Institute (founding member and Board Chair), the Young Invincibles, Women Involved in Non-Traditional Employment Roles (WINTER), and the Brentwood School.  

Furthermore, Reddock-Wright has been honored by her peers as one of The Best Lawyers in America® since 2020 and was recognized by Super Lawyers as a Top 50 Woman Attorney in Los Angeles, in addition to over a dozen other accolades across a number of publications and organizations. One of her most recent achievements was the authorship of her book, The Workplace Transformed: 7 Crucial Lessons from the Global Pandemic. She also hosts the community radio show Legal Lens with Angela Reddock-Wright on Tavis Smiley’s KBLA Talk 1580.  

Such a decorated career in law and alternative dispute resolution is attributed to Reddock-Wright’s balanced, facilitative, and evaluative style and championing of the mediation process. Reddock-Wright is driven by an understanding that conflict, particularly workplace conflict, is an inevitable aspect of human nature—and that it can be mitigated by listening, understanding, and guiding parties to resolution. Her experiences as a former employment and labor law litigator and workplace and Title IX investigator have also shaped this perspective. Having conducted thousands of interviews with clients from all walks of life taught her the value of showing compassion and building trust when eliciting information, a practice she continues in her mediation practice today. 

DEBORAH GREENSPAN is a leading advisor on mass claims strategy and resolution. Her practice focuses on class actions, mass claims, dispute resolution, insurance recovery, and mass tort bankruptcy. She has extensive experience in mass products liability matters, class actions, analysis of damages and future liability exposure, insurance recovery, alternative dispute resolution (“ADR”), claims evaluation and dispute analysis, settlement distribution design and implementation, claims management and risk analysis.

Deborah has been appointed by judges and government institutions to serve as a Special Master. She served as the court-appointed Special Master responsible for developing and implementing a settlement program to distribute funds to over 100,000 Vietnam veterans. She served as the Deputy Special Master for the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001, and she was responsible for conceiving the policies and for facilitating the distribution of over $9 billion to victims of the September 11 attacks. She currently serves as the Special Master in the Flint Water Cases litigation.

MERRIL HIRSCH of HirshADR PLLC and the Law Office of Merril Hirsh PLLC in Washington, D.C. is an arbitrator, hearing examiner, mediator and the Executive Director of the Academy of Court-Appointed Neutrals as well as Chair of the ABA Judicial Division Lawyers Conference Court-Appointed Neutrals Committee and a member of its Executive Committee. He has litigated cases on behalf of both plaintiffs and defendants as well as the United States government in federal or state courts for over 40 years and
in over 40 states.

He is also a Fellow of both the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and the Academy of Court-Appointed Neutrals, a member of the Council of the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution, a hearing committee chair for the DC Board of Professional Responsibility, a hearing examiner for the Architect of the Capitol, an arbitrator, a private commercial mediator and a family law mediator for DC Superior Court. He received the 2024 Nachtigal Award from the American Judges Association for service to the administration of
justice, the 2023 Lawyer as Problem Solver Award from the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution and twice received the Civil Justice Award from the Academy of Court-Appointed Neutrals. He graduated with a BA, with high honors in Government, from Oberlin College in 1979 and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, magna cum laude in 1982.

SIDNEY KANAZAWA, ESQ., a former McGuireWoods, Pillsbury, and Lillick partner, has won trials and reached agreements many thought improbable, including a 45 minute defense verdict in a bellwether pharmaceutical case and the resolution of 2,000+ claims in 3 months (600 within 2 weeks) following a massive oil spill. He is a frequent trial, deposition, negotiation, and diversity/inclusion speaker and writer and is a graduate of the University of Hawaii (College of Education), the University of Southern California (Gould School of Law) and the Pepperdine and Harvard mediation and negotiation programs. He has been a keynote speaker, program director, or instructor for the National Institute for Trial Advocacy (NITA), DRI, or the Institute for Inclusion in the Legal Profession (IILP) in Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Missouri, Nevada, Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, Washington, and Japan and has authored articles on preparing witnesses for deposition, an Aikido approach to depositions, video, persuasion, negotiations, mediation, rule of law, diversity, and civil rights. He is currently a full-time mediator/arbitrator, an adjunct professor at Pepperdine Law School (“Apology, Forgiveness, and Reconciliation”), a select member of the Los Angeles Superior Court ADR Committee, a Board Member of the Academy of Court Appointed Neutrals, and will be President of the Litigation Counsel of America in 2026.