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“The quality of our team is unrivaled ...
We’ve tried to create an environment where people feel they are well served not only in the quality of the professional services they receive, but also the ancillary services we provide in terms of the ambiance.”
Meisinger spent ve years with Dis- ney before embarking on another ad- venture, this time as a senior advisor, aka consultant, with Sheppard Mullin under a ve-year agreement. e rm was looking to form an entertainment law practice and hired him and two of his former partners to create and build the business. While at Sheppard Mullin, Meisinger was also respon- sible for forming the rm’s Hispanic Business Group – harkening back to Meisinger’s college major.
“I think by the time we le , we had about 50 lawyers in the entertainment practice, including lawyers perform- ing both transactional and litigation work,” he says.
All the while Meisinger was con- sulting, he was also moonlighting.
“At the same time I was with Shep- pard Mullin, I worked as a private me- diator,” he says.
Working on a three-member arbi- tration panel, one of the members, a retired judge, asked him if he would consider a career on the bench. Meis- inger, already 65, shared his back- ground with the judge, and, at the judge’s urging, submitted his applica- tion.
Within the year, he was appointed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and served on the bench for six years.
Back and Forth
Meisinger muses about his career to that point, which took him from a private law rm, to a large public company, back in a law rm and - nally to the judiciary.
“As a former trial lawyer myself, you never know exactly how judges think, and by developing relationships and friendships with judges you get to see how they do things—how they prefer
to see lawyers act in the courtroom and outside the courtroom.”
It’s knowledge he shares with law rms and attorney groups in a pre- sentation called, “From the Bar to the Bench and Back.”
“I talk about how as a trial lawyer I would try my cases try my cases dif- ferently now that I’ve seen what the judges’ perspective is,” he explains.
New Horizons
Meisinger re ects on his time on the bench as an opportunity for pub- lic service and to build friendships, which he has to this day. Several of his former bench colleagues, namely retired judges Michael Latin, Enrique Romero, James Steele and Richard A. Stone, started Signature Resolution, which employs neutrals as mediators, arbitrators, court-appointed referees and as assigned judges.
“Mediation is rewarding. It puts you in a unique position serving in various roles, as a judge, a conciliator and as a therapist” he says. “A lot of mediation success depends on rela- tionship building.
“Mediation requires a combina- tion of skills,” he adds. “You have to be knowledgeable about the merits of a case, you have to be a pragmatist, you have to know what is theoretical and what’s doable, and you have to be someone who can instill con dence in the lawyers and their clients.”
At Signature, Meisinger mediates, arbitrates, referees and presides as an assigned judge. His cases include mass tort cases, which can include de- fective products as well as natural and human disasters. He also handles gen- eral commercial and business cases, including disputes among businesses and companies over anti-trust, real
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estate, intellectual property and secu- rities issues, with an emphasis on class action work. He works extensively in the entertainment eld on cases in- volving copyrights, trademarks - nancing issues and business deals that have gone awry. And he applies his two-year experience as a family court judge to handle some of the biggest divorce cases in the country.
“It’s di cult, but it’s incredibly re- warding work,” says Meisinger, who has been married to his wife, Sue, for 52 years and has three daughters and ve grandchildren.
Meisinger believes the rm is in a fortunate position, as the workload is unlikely to ease up.
“Mediation has grown exponen- tially because the courts are over- whelmed,” he explains. “ ere’s a niche for alternative dispute resolu- tion companies to take the load o the courts by having the mediators settle the cases and reduce the courts’ workload.”
Hence the advent of Signature Res- olution, of which Meisinger was one of the founders.
“It’s wonderful,” he says of the company, which is soon to announce plans for extensive growth. “We feel like we’ve created something di er- ent.”
Located in the US Bank building, the o ce aims to provide every ame- nity—from a concierge service, to food to lounges—to take some of the stress out of the process.
More importantly, he says, all of Signature’s panelists have had distin- guished careers as lawyers and judges.
“ e quality of our team is unri- valed,” Meisinger says. “We’ve tried to create an environment where people feel they are well served not only in
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