MWI Real Estate Mediation Panel


Hon. Peter W. Kilborn (ret.) was the Chief Justice of the Land Court from 1996 until his retirement in 2003. He was an Associate Justice of the Court for six years before that. Prior to becoming a judge, he was an attorney in private practice, most recently since 1968 at Rackemann, Sawyer & Brewster in Boston, where he was a director and Managing Director. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. His practice as a lawyer included extensive experience in real estate matters, including title-related issues, leasing, financing, subdivision, zoning, other land-use matters, other regulatory matters, and bond financing, including representation of major educational and medical institutions in the Boston area. Since leaving the bench, Judge Kilborn has been active as a mediator. He received mediation training at Mediation Works Incorporated (MWI) and has served as a faculty member in training programs for Massachusetts Continuing Education, Inc., as a court-appointed master, and as a hearing officer for the Commission on Judicial Conduct and the Board of Bar Overseers.


Joel M. Reck is a mediator, attorney and a partner at Brown Rudnick Berlack Israels LLP, where he is Chairman of the firm’s Real Estate Department. His mediation experience includes the mediation of a complex multi-party real estate dispute involving contested ownership of a large shopping center, and participation in a Washington, D.C. Federal Court of Appeals mediation representing Mayor Menino and the City of Boston concerning the proposed expansion of Logan Airport.  For forty years, Mr. Reck’s diverse real estate practice has included development projects, acquisitions, sales, financings, leases and work-outs for a variety of institutions with an emphasis on developers, real estate advisors, high-tech companies, pension plans and REITS. He often works closely with ERISA, securities and tax attorneys in connection with this work. His practice consists of structuring, managing and closing sophisticated commercial real estate transactions throughout the United States and has included several of the largest recent development projects in the Greater Boston area. Recently, Mr. Reck has represented developers and high-tech companies in the planning, permitting and development of high-tech campuses, office buildings and telecommunication facilities. With respect to commercial real estate leasing, Mr. Reck has handled two of the three largest leases ever undertaken in the City of Boston, in one instance representing the building owner and in the other instance representing a major institutional tenant. Mr. Reck is listed in the 2006 Woodward White’s The Best Lawyers in America for Real Estate Law. Recognizing his status in the industry, Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business recently named Mr. Reck as a leading individual in real estate law in Massachusetts. Mr. Reck was also named in 2004 and 2005 as a Massachusetts "Super Lawyer" by the publishers of Law & Politics.


John “Jack” Wofford has experience in mediation, arbitration, facilitation, consensus-building and other forms of dispute resolution in a broad range of areas, including real estate, construction, development and lease disputes among landlords and tenants, co-tenants, owners, developers, lenders, builders, architects and engineers, subcontractors, condominium associations, neighbors, government agencies, and insurance carriers, including professional, title and liability insurers. He has dealt with design and site selection disputes concerning projects from shopping centers to new highways, the latter as facilitator of the dispute over the Zakim Bridge over the Charles River that was part of Boston's $12 billion Central Artery/Tunnel project, and as facilitator of advisory committee dealing with location, scale and design of proposed improvements to Route 6 in Connecticut. He was a partner in a Boston law firm working on complex and environmentally sensitive urban projects until 1986, and was a senior consultant at Endispute from 1987 until 1993, when he established his own ADR practice. In 1999, President Clinton appointed Jack to a seat on the Federal Service Impasses Panel, which resolves disputes in negotiations between the Federal Government and its unionized employees. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School and of Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. After law school, he clerked for a US District Judge in Washington, DC. He is a member of the bars of Massachusetts, New York, and the District of Columbia (DC inactive).


Diane J. Levin is a dispute resolution professional in full-time practice working as a mediator, trainer, consultant and attorney. A mediator since 1995, Diane has conducted mediations in court and non-court settings in disputes involving real estate, condominium association, housing, divorce, family, workplace, and community issues and claims, and serves on the Boston Bar Association’s Boston Municipal Court mediation panel. She also serves as Hearing Officer for the Marblehead Housing Authority, conducting grievance hearings for residents of state-aided public housing. Before becoming a mediator, Diane practiced personal injury, municipal, real estate, employment, and family law with a private law firm, and continues to consult on matters involving real property, tort and workplace issues. In addition to her mediation background, Diane has extensive training experience, training hundreds of individuals in community, corporate, academic, and non-profit settings both in Massachusetts and nationally, for clients that have included Coca-Cola Enterprises and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Diane serves on the Massachusetts Trial Court Standing Committee on Dispute Resolution which is charged with promoting and improving the use of dispute resolution services in courts throughout the Commonwealth. She is also the publisher of an electronic serial, MediationNewsOnline.com, which provides news and commentary on mediation and conflict resolution and is the first regularly published woman-owned alternative dispute resolution weblog in the world. Diane is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Russian Language, and earned her J.D. cum laude from Suffolk University Law School in Boston.


Charles “Chuck” Doran is an experienced mediator and the founder of Mediation Works Incorporated (MWI), a dispute resolution service and training organization in Boston, Massachusetts. A mediator since 1992, he is a member of the CPR Dispute Resolution Panel of Distinguished Neutrals, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD), Mediation Works Incorporated (MWI), the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) Dispute Resolution Panel, the Harvard Mediation Program and the United States Postal Service REDRESS I and REDRESS II Mediation Panels. He has experience mediating real estate, construction, lease disputes among landlords and tenants, owners, builders, architects, subcontractors, and condominium associations. In addition to his mediation work, Charles works nationally and internationally as a dispute resolution trainer and consultant with corporate, governmental and non-profit clients including Coca-Cola Enterprises, General Motors, Bose Corporation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Harvard Negotiation Project at Harvard Law School. Charles has served as a teaching assistant on multiple occasions with Professor Roger Fisher at Harvard Law School's Program of Instruction for Lawyers Negotiation Workshop. In 1993, Charles completed a Specialization in Negotiation and Dispute Resolution at the Program on Negotiation and chaired two regional ADR Conferences in 1997 and 1999. Charles served as a member of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Standing Committee on Dispute Resolution and was Chair of the Qualifications Subcommittee. Charles is an arbitrator with the Massachusetts Bar Association's Fee Arbitration Board and is a past president of the Association for Conflict Resolution (formerly the Society of Professionals in Dispute Resolution), New England Chapter.


For more information and to schedule a mediation session, please contact:

Joshua M. Hoch
Mediator / Director of Mediation Services

MWI
4 Faneuil Hall - Fourth Floor
Boston, MA 02109-1632

617-973-9739 x23 - phone
800-348-4888 - toll-free
617-973-9532 - fax
jhoch@mwi.org - email
www.mwi.org/realestate - web
 

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