Spotlight

In his early adulthood, Robert ("Bob") Wrede, AB '66, JD '69, a former Army paratrooper and collegiate wrestler, was convinced that conflict resolution "meant shoot it, break it up." For many years a hardnosed litigator, Bob explains, "Now, I've learned to use active listening effectively - listening rather than pontificating - someone can say something extremely aggressive and, little by little, I can tease out what really drives the conflict by asking carefully crafted, non-threatening questions. One of the fascinating and challenging things about ADR [alternative dispute resolution] is developing new insights and skills to avoid, manage and resolve conflict without resorting to the abrasive, adversarial, and unnecessarily expensive processes of traditional litigation."

For four decades, Bob has been a commercial trial attorney. Ten years ago, however, he became fascinated by alternative dispute resolution, after a professional skills seminar at Pepperdine University's prestigious Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution led him to an "epiphany" about the effectiveness of collaborative problem solving in resolving conflict. He now holds an LL.M in Dispute Resolution from Straus, and has arbitrated, evaluated or mediated more than 350 civil cases for the Los Angeles County Superior Court and the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, for ADR Services, Inc., a leading provider of skilled mediators and arbitrators in California and for both Dispute Prevention & Resolution, Inc. and the Hawaii International Dispute Resolution Group, in Hawaii. He estimates that he settles around 80 percent of the cases he mediates. He also lectures regularly on various applications of ADR before such groups as the Southern California Mediation Association, the Hawaii Supreme Court ADR Section, and the Cornell Law School's Berger International Legal Studies Program Speakers Series. Although Bob's experiences and skills have led him to success as an attorney, law professor and active neutral, he did not always aspire to be a lawyer. Growing up in Jackson Heights, New York,Bob originally thought he pursue a career in the military. In 1957, he graduated as valedictorian from Valley Forge Military Academy, in Pennsylvania, then earned a B.A. from Cornell in 1961. He then attended Officer Candidate School at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, graduating first in his class as a second lieutenant. Bob was then assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, N.C. and was sent to the Dominican Republic, briefly, after the assassination of dictator, Rafael Trujillo.

Bob credits his military experience with helping him develop and strengthen skills that would later serve him well both as a lawyer and as a neutral. According to him, "Being able to operate effectively in a stressful situation and quickly develop and implement a reactive, flexible and effective game plan under pressure was excellent training."

Although he found army life exciting and enjoyable, he now jokes that he left the service to attend law school largely because his first wife thought he was "having too much fun jumping out of planes and being shot at." Following his active duty, he graduated from Cornell Law School in 1969, which he found to be both challenging and rewarding.

On being a trial lawyer he observes, "There's no blood spilled, but American litigation is not only vigorously adversarial, but frequently abrasive, and is frequently conducted on a take-no-prisoners, scorched earth basis." Though he has represented well-known entertainers, including Marlon Brando and Lynn Redgrave, Bob says he has had the most fun and satisfaction with antitrust and environmental litigation, including the massive litigation that followed the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill.

During the first fifteen years of his career, Bob worked at McCutchen, Black,Verleger & Shea, handling products liability, antitrust, environmental litigation and entertainment law. Since 1999, he has been with Russ August & Kabat. His areas of specialty include contracts, unfair competition, trade secret theft, antitrust, securities, sexual harassment, discrimination, entertainment, environmental torts, intellectual property, international trade, professional liability, insurance coverage and commercial litigation.

An active surfer, skier and scuba diver, Bob has come to view effective conflict management through alternative dispute resolution as a way of life. He believes strongly that if parties in any complex conflict are willing to collaborate in the search for a mutually beneficial and acceptable resolution of their differences, they are likely to resolve those differences at far less cost and with far greater satisfaction and return to , than by resorting to traditional American-style litigation.

When it comes to mediation, Bob's strategy is straightforward. He tries to provide a psychological and physical environment that is conducive to collaboration and creativity, and to use his own balance of evaluative, persuasive and facilitative skills to assist the parties in crafting a mutually satisfactory resolution. According to him, "Alternative dispute resolution provides an opportunity for the collaborative creation of mutually acceptable solutions by people interested in achieving the best and most satisfying return to all concerned, at the lowest cost."

Currently, Bob's personal goals are three-fold: to share his four decades of legal experience with his students at Pepperdine Law School and Pepperdine's Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution: to help people in conflict to avoid, manage and resolve their differences - commercial and personal- in a cost-effective and personally satisfying manner; and to collaborate with his lawyer-wife Ranlyn in raising their 9-month-old son, Kendrick, to emulate Kendrick's siblings: Christian, 37, also lawyer, with an MBA from Stanford and a J.D. from UC Berkeley School of Law, and Suzanne, 39, an information technology guru. Photos of Bob's sons and daughter, not to mention his lovely wife, cover his office walls, as well as a small shot of himself as a high school senior at Valley Forge Military Academy, wearing a full dress uniform—part of a 1957 photo spread in Seventeen magazine on military balls.

Former colleagues commend Wrede for his professional skills, noting that his talent, experience and steady demeanor distinguish him as an effective and knowledgeable arbitrator and mediator. "I have known Bob Wrede for almost twenty years, having personally litigated and mediated matters with him," said Layn Phillips, a former federal judge and current litigation partner at Irell & Manella with extensive experience in alternative dispute resolution. "Bob is a highly skilled trial lawyer; now he has superbly transitioned from his Secretary of War role as trial counsel to his Secretary of State role as a mediator. I would trust him with any complex case."

Justice William A. Masterson has known Wrede for twenty-five years. "He's an exceptionally strong lawyer," Masterson said. "He's very skilled and if he continues to use the talent he had as a skilled practicing lawyer, he'll be exceptionally good as an arbitrator and mediator. As an arbitrator, a person has to make decisions, and I watched him make a number of decisions when he was a lawyer and he was always right on the money in what he did."