Richard F. Ziegler is an experienced arbitrator and an accredited mediator. He has served as chair, sole or co-arbitrator in more than 80 arbitration proceedings, about evenly divided between international and domestic matters, administered by CPR, the ICC, ICDR, AAA, HKIAC, LCIA and ad hoc.
Before becoming a full-time arbitrator and mediator, Mr. Ziegler had been a partner at Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton from 1984-2002 and at Jenner & Block in New York from 2007-2019. Mr. Ziegler was Senior Vice President, Legal Affairs, and General Counsel of the 3M Company in St. Paul, Minnesota from 2003-07, where he led a department of more than 150 lawyers in 24 countries. In 2019 he co-founded AcumenADR LLC with Noah Hanft, former CEO of CPR, to support their practices as ADR neutrals.
Mr. Ziegler is recognized in the Chambers Global and USA guides in “Band 1” for international arbitrators based in the United States. is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and the College of Commercial Arbitrators. He is on CPR’s National, Technology, Financial Services, Cross-Border and General Counsel panels. He is a member of the “Tech List” panel of arbitrators sponsored by the Silicon Valley Arbitration and Mediation Center. He is also a member of the arbitrator rosters maintained by the International Centre for Dispute Resolution and the American Arbitration Association (Large Complex Case Panel and Aerospace, Aviation and National Security Panel).
His experience as arbitrator, and previously as a practicing lawyer, has involved matters in the financial services, technology, aerospace, pharmaceutical and manufacturing and distribution sectors.
A member of the Board of Directors of CPR Dispute Resolution Services, Mr. Ziegler also chairs the CIArb NY Branch’s Education Committee and has served as a Co-Director of the CIArb/Columbia Law School annual “Comprehensive Course on International Arbitration.” He chaired CPR’s Task Force on Remote Video Arbitration Proceedings in 2020-21 and a member of the faculty in 2024. He is a past Chair of the New York State Bar Association’s Committee on Professional Ethics.
Mr. Ziegler is certified as a mediator in international matters by London’s Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution.
Mr. Ziegler is a graduate of Yale College and Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the arvarHarvard Law Review.
He describes his philosophy as an arbitrator as follows:
After more than 40 years as outside and in-house counsel, I am committed to ensuring that the arbitrations and mediation matters entrusted to me will achieve the promise of fairness, promptness and cost-efficiency offered by alternative dispute resolution. I therefore seek to be as quickly responsive to the parties as possible and honor the parties’ joint wishes, favoring expedition and lower costs in the event of disagreements except where circumstances and fairness plainly warrant otherwise. My decision-making is controlled by the applicable law while reflecting my commercial understanding and business experience. I respect counsel and the parties and seek to avoid the insensitivity that in my experience as a practicing lawyer sometimes marred the exercise of authority by judges (e.g., scheduling a hearing to start the day after Labor Day; taking many months to decide a motion).