Outstanding experience! From the initial phone call, to the visit and until the case was settled, I experienced nothing but professionalism and great service. Their panel has a high level of expertise and knowledge.

Stay away from ADR Services. I was assigned a retired judge, Elia Weinbach, who was riddled with attribution and confirmation bias. He allowed opposing counsel to miss a first, then a second deadline to file a motion for summary judgment, despite our strong opposition. Brought biased and external subjective opinions and applied them in the motion’s hearing. Then he granted their motion in full! So much more to list, too little space here. ADR sells arbitration as a cheaper and faster alternative - that is no longer true. Avoid using ADR, arbitration and certainly the unfair Elia Weinbach. Hope he enjoys the small fortune he made off of me. Result: my case is back in Superior Court, remains open, and no resolution. An expensive and years-long process for nothing.

ADR claims to provide the highest level of quality, integrity, and efficiency in dispute resolution services by offering an outstanding group of mediators, arbitrators, referees, and private judges, combined with superior case management. That is far from the truth. Go ahead and read their dismal reviews. We are obviously not the only ones duped by Judge Williams and the band of misfits at ADR.From my personal experience and reading other reviews, they hire retired, incapacitated, unethical Judges that are a bunch of scam artist that like to rip off their clients by prolonging the cases for months and even years so they can continue to send outrageous bills and collect money. Don’t take my word for it. Read the reviews and you will see. In my opinion these guys should be arrested. They are above the law as they have no supervising agency to regulate them that I’m aware of.Judge Williams, in particular, apparently had personal problems and should have asked to be recused from the case since that would have been the professional thing to do. During the arbitration hearings, he was easily distracted, did not seem to have a clue of what was going on, and only cared about cookie breaks. When both parties decided to finish through briefs instead of issuing a final ruling, he would encourage both parties to submit more motions, charts, rebuttals, and counter rebuttals. Finally, both parties asked that he make his final ruling as all the evidence already has been submitted more than once, and please no more redundant back and forth motions.Based on the final award issued, Judge Williams seems to be completely lost, completely out of touch with case law, the legal code, and did not know how to make a proper ruling. He took four years to make his final ruling and issue an award where he misapplied the law, and his reasoning made no sense as he contradicted himself throughout his order. The order was ambiguous and poorly written when asked for clarification; he was angry and sanctioned us. Because he refused to clarify his final ruling both parties had no choice but then to jointly hire another specialist attorney/referee to interpret the final judgement via interacting with the court system so both parties could finally figure out what he was trying to say in his order and what the correct legal application was to settle the case. The referee was completely baffled that a guy like JUDGE WILLIAMS could be so out of his element in doing his job. Finally we had our referee who knew how to apply the law and came up with a reasonable settlement that both parties understood and could live with.

When you own a small family-owned business and have millions of dollars tied up in litigation, you want the matter resolved promptly. For a big corporation, millions of dollars are nothing, but for a small family-owned business, it takes a hit. We were hoping that would be the results with ADR Services, quick and efficient. Unfortunately, that was far from the case.The Judge that we selected from ADRs list was Judge Williams. I was not happy with my decision because he lacked professionalism in many areas. To start with, he encountered what he called a personal matter at the time our case appointed to him. Only he had an idea of how this would affect him being able to work on our case. We only found out much later that he used this excuse to constantly give us delay after delay, all the while we were losing money as our properties were tied up with no cash flow coming in. Right then, he should have requested a recusal from the case, and it had it assigned another judge. As a professional, he should have known that he was not in the right state of mind to handle not only our case but any case appointed to him at this time. Instead, he decided to take on the case, but made his issue a priority and put us, the clients on the back burner every step of the way. I guess at ADR the customer comes last, even after there several personal vacations.The Judge was always leaving the country due to his matter, so this delayed our Arbitration. When we finally went in to have our case heard in front of Judge Williams, it was a complete circus. Aside from the constant cookie breaks, he was easily distracted, did not seem to understand, nor really care about the essence of the case, never took notes, and on several occasions, I would catch him taking naps. After a week of Arbitration, no decision made. We had to reschedule, and of course, scheduling had to be arranged according to his availability. Since he was always out of the country, for personal matters; to schedule became a massive factor in delaying the case.Due to the constant delays of trying to schedule a suitable date for the Judge, both parties agreed to finish the Arbitration through briefings. That was another nightmare; both parties would submit their briefs, then he would give each party the opportunity to rebuttal the claims made on the submissions, this went on for years going back and forth until finally, both parties put an end to the never-ending rounds of briefs and rebuttals.When the final award was granted, Judge Williams not only contradicted himself but gave us an ambiguous ruling that left both parties with more questions than answers. When we asked for clarification, we were sanctioned. After spending years and thousands of dollars waiting for the Judge to come up with an incompetent ruling that left both sides scratching their heads in utter disbelief of the incoherency, the least we could receive is clarity from the Judge. Instead, we had to spend thousands more and have an outside court referee not affiliated with ADR Services clarify the order for us. The referee even said that the Judge made a poor decision, and he did not understand how he came up with such an incompetent ruling.This experience has left me with such a bad taste in my mouth, and I would not want anyone else to have the same experience I did, wait for years and get milked for money, then to have to go and spend additional money. I would not trust Judge Williams to handle any arbitration, mediation, or any legal matter. I honestly believe he is going senile. He is too old and way out of his element as an arbitrator or mediator.

Using ADR Services was a costly mistake. They are not careful when hiring Arbitrators, Mediators, Referees, or Private Judges. From personal experience, the Arbitrator selected by the parties to the case I was involved in was, in my opinion,as well as the attorney’s opinion, incompetent and not in any capacity to make any legal ruling. Judge Williams is a retired judge for a reason and should stay retired. He was easily distracted, more worried about cookie breaks than the case itself. On more than one occasion, he would close his eyes and appear to take micro naps in the middle of testimonies and cross-examinations, he often seemed to be bored, uninterested, and I never seen him jot down notes. Not only was he the worst, but he dragged on what was a very simple case for over four years as he collected more and more money. Part of the reason for the delay was he went gallivanting off to South Africa several times during the process. He claimed it was a personal matter he had to attend to. If he had any sort of professional decency he should have recused himself from this case and assigned it to another Arbitrator that could live up to his professional responsibility and process the case in a reasonable manner. Had we known that he was going to play hooky on us every chance he got we would have fired this nincompoop right off the bat. He had the professional responsibility to recuse himself, knowing that he was not going to be able to handle this case in any reasonable manner. I believe the personal matter was an excuse because he could have made his ruling without delay, but the trips needed financing and what better way than to continue a case and continue to bill the clients.Another delay tactic I believe he played was going around in circles with briefs. Both parties would submit their briefs, and then he would give both parties a chance to rebuttal one anothers briefs. He started this delay when both parties decided to finish the arbitration through briefs since the Judge never had any available dates. Then he made a final ruling that made no sense not only was it poorly written vague and ambiguous, but he also contradicted himself. To me as well as the attorneys, the ruling only proved that Judge Williams clearly did not understand the case nor did he care enough to give it his full attention.

The facility is very nice and well maintained. The staff is knowledgible, courteous and helpful. Checking in is a breeze and then one of the staff shows you to a room, most of which, have themes, like the one i was in,but which was an Australia themed conference room. Meals are provided and are beverages and fresh fruit always available. Whether a case settles of course involves many variables, including the clients desire to settle, the financial wherewithal if a defendant, the mediator, the time, etc., but the environment also is condusive to settlement. ADR provides a form to complete and sign in the event of settlement which is a pretty good form.

I would never use their services again. They recommended Michelle Rosenblatt, a retired judge who was supposed to be impartial. Impartial doesnt belong in her vocabulary. They should have told us the truth - that the judges that they recommend- at least this one, takes sides, doesnt let experts testify, shuts them up mid speaking and makes decisions that dont comply with the law. What a disgrace to what is supposed to be a fair and equitable arbitration. This will be the last time I ever use their services and I will be very vocal about how this organization chooses their panel of arbitrators. They should do a bit more research on the people they recommend prior to putting them on their panels

Recent remodelled conference center with great support.

Rob Mann nailed it. 🏛

Unparalleled mediation house.