Kelvin H. Chin, MA, JD
Business Mediator
 

Background

Kelvin H. Chin started mediating business disputes in the 1980’s and has mediated more than 500 cases over the past 30 years. He has trained more than 600 mediators nationally during the 10 years he was VP of the American Arbitration Association, including attorneys, judges, and non-lawyer professionals. He is a co-founder of the nonprofit Center for Medical Ethics and Mediation, and was formerly Vice Chair of the ABA Section on Dispute Resolution’s Ombuds Committee when he was ombudsperson in the President’s Office at MIT. Kelvin has taught mediation at law schools and business schools. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College, Yale University, and Boston College Law School during which he was a litigation law clerk at Bingham, and later a corporate associate at Choate Hall & Stewart.

Expertise & Style

Kelvin has mediated disputes in diverse areas including real estate, construction, securities, partnership dissolution, employment, education, healthcare, and many other areas of business and contractual disputes. Cases have been in all stages — negotiation failure, pre-litigation, discovery, during litigation, during arbitration, as well as during breakdowns in communication when no actual dispute yet existed.

Kelvin has the ability to handle matters in all of these stages because he does not simply apply “strong-arm tactics” as some mediators do. He listens. And he has the unique talent of helping parties listen to each other in a way that has escaped them prior to sitting in mediation with Kelvin. This often can lead parties to come up with solutions that are “out of the box,” not the usual “splitting of the baby” type solutions typically seen in most mediations today.

Kelvin can facilitate the “win-win” solution. And he can help parties repair and retain their relationships — crucial to the success of the business in many scenarios.

Instead of simply figuring out how many “slices to cut the pie up,” Kelvin helps parties explore if it is possible “to bake more pies.” This can take the form of both intangible and very tangible points of agreement, ranging from apologies between warring factions to creative ways to finance necessary elements of a deal by interested third parties otherwise not thought of because they may not have been an actual legal party to the dispute being litigated.

Multi-party & Group Facilitations

Kelvin has mediated multi-party disputes represented by multiple lawyers involving multiple jurisdictions. He has mediated disputes involving 18 disputants in the room representing multiple stakeholder groups with varying interests. Kelvin has also mediated matters involving parties physically in the room, as well as parties “virtually” in the room via videoconference.

He has also moderated large group meetings in conflict-rich environments on highly contentious national topics. For example, Kelvin moderated a network-televised panel debate in front of an audience of 500 at UCSD Medical Center on the “Right to Die” featuring Derek Humphry, author of “Jean’s Way” and “Final Exit” as well as a physician who was “For” the California proposition, and a physician and a nurse who were “Against” the proposition.