Philip Cottone is a lawyer by background and a dispute resolution professional. He is a member of the commercial and real estate arbitration panels and the mediation panel of the American Arbitration Association (AAA); and the neutral panels of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and The Counselors of Real Estate (CRE). He is been certified by the International Mediation Institute at the Hague, and is an educator, trainer and lecturer in dispute resolution.
Mr. Cottone has been an arbitrator since 1976 when he was qualified by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD, now the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority). Over the years he has been panelist or chair in many types of securities, real estate and commercial disputes, both as sole arbitrator and a member of panels, both privately and under the auspices of an ADR organization. In the early nineties he was requested by the Claims Administrator in SEC v. Prudential to be a hearing officer in a med-arb process involving claims brought against Prudential for real estate limited partnerships. In 2004 he was retained by JAMS (then JAMS - Endispute) for an arbitration panel with two former federal judges in a securities case heard in Pittsburgh over a two week period. He has been a mediator since the nineties and to date he has mediated well over 500 cases.
In the mid-nineties Mr. Cottone chaired of the Sub-committee of the NASD National Arbitration Committee that developed the mediation rules and procedures for the securities industry. He then became Chair of the parent committee for three years, the re-named National Arbitration and Mediation Committee, when the NASD rolled out a securities mediation program nationally
In the late nineties he co-authored and began teaching the one day course, Mediation in Right of Way, for the International Right of Way Association. In 2003 -2005 he was a panelist and course book author on mediation for the Pennsylvania Bar Institute full day course, Prosecuting & Defending Claims Against Broker Dealers, given in Philadelphia, Harrisburg and Pittsburgh; he is a regular panelist on the PLI (NY) annual one day program Securities Arbitration; and is a member of the faculty of the ABA Dispute Resolution annual Institutes on both Mediation and Arbitration.
In 2005 he chaired a Task Force on ADR for the Counselors of Real Estate, and then the standing ADR Committee (2006-2008). He was principal editor of the CRE ADR Rules and Procedures, and is a trainer for CRE arbitrators and mediators. He has also served as a trainer for mediation students of the New Jersey Association of Professional Mediators (NJAPM), and Fordham and Temple Law Schools. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the ABA Dispute Resolution Section governing Council; a board member and co-program chair of the Greater Philadelphia Chapter of the Association for Conflict Resolution; and a member of the Pennsylvania Council of Mediators and the New Jersey Association of Professional Mediators.
Mr. Cottone is a 1961 graduate of Columbia College, Columbia University, where he received the Burdette Kinne Award for Humanities. He is a 1966 graduate of the New York University School of Law, where he received the Administrative Law Prize.