Bennett Feigenbaum

Bennett Feigenbaum

Bennett Feigenbaum is President and Chief Administrative Officer of Independent Ombuds Services. He has over twenty-five years’ experience in business and commercial dispute resolution. His principal work experience was in a large corporate environment as a senior-level officer engaged in corporate governance matters and with major international responsibilities.

Ombuds Services

Feigenbaum is a major figure in the field of ombuds services. He co-created and co-chaired the American Bar Association DRS Ombuds Task Force during its two-year life (2011-2013).
Currently:

  • Co-Chair, Ombuds Committee, ABA Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice
  • Chairs, Ombuds Subcommittee, ABA Business Law Section Dispute Resolution Committee
  • Developing ombuds programming in the ABA Section of Labor and Employment Law
  • Author, “Nine Things Every Business Lawyer Should Know About Ombuds” (ABA Business Law Today –September 2014)
  • Chair, Ombuds Committee, New Jersey State Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolution
  • Chair, Ombuds Interest Section, New Jersey Association of Professional Mediators

Law Practice Management

Ben Feigenbaum’s Specialties
  • Corporate Governance
  • Law Practice Management
  • Legal Fees
  • Government & Politics
  • Telecommunications

Since 1991 Feigenbaum has owned and managed a company advising businesses and government agencies on controlling their legal expenses, including structure and operation of in-house law departments, increased use of alternative dispute resolution tools and techniques, and analysis (and expert testimony) on the reasonableness of legal bills in major matters.

Feigenbaum worked for over twenty years at AT&T, at that time the world’s largest corporation, including as AT&T Long Lines General Counsel heading a fifty-five lawyer department of that 50,000 employee, $32 billion entity. He was engaged in all aspects of its corporate governance and business operations.

International

His international responsibilities included supervision of the legal group negotiating interconnection agreements with each of the then 218 nations in the world, and joint agreements with governments and private companies for the construction, operation and maintenance of geosynchronous satellites and transoceanic cable systems. He served on the six-member Board of Directors of the Cuban American Telephone & Telegraph Company responsible for its cable system and for providing services between those two nations constrained by the restrictions imposed by the State Department under the Cuban embargo. Feigenbaum also served as United States Delegate to the International Telecommunications Union in Geneva, Switzerland. As a United States Air Force officer, Feigenbaum commanded a detachment establishing an American presence on the Island of Crete, addressing logistical and personnel and political issues there and frequently in Athens and Tripoli, Libya.

Civic Groups

Feigenbaum has a long history of involvement with volunteer, trade and civic groups. He was the founder and first president and then senior advisor to the New Jersey Corporate Counsel Association, building it to 500 members from 120 companies in that State. He chaired the Coalition for Open Government, a statewide Initiative effort that succeeded in enacting political campaign and lobbying reform legislation in Washington State. He conceptualized and organized and chaired the Seattle-King County Association of Community Councils; created and chaired the Seattle Urban Social Problems Committee; chaired the Metropolitan (Seattle) Democratic Club; and chaired a Seattle Police Chief Selection Committee during a turbulent period in that city’s history. He served on the Boards of Directors of: Seattle Urban League, Seattle Legal Services Center, State Committee on Law and Justice, Washington Environmental Council, Municipal League, Council of Planning Affiliates, Allied Arts of Seattle, and Pottery Northwest. He served as Principal of Temple de Hirsch Religion School’s junior high and high school departments, responsible for 35 teachers and 575 students. He was designated Seattle Young Man of the Year in 1975.

Dispute Resolution

Feigenbaum has been a business and commercial arbitrator and mediator for over twenty-five years, mostly for the American Arbitration Association. He is an AAA-trained mediator and international arbitrator, and served on its New Jersey Regional Commercial Advisory Council. He is a founding Master and serves on the Board of the JMLG American Inn of Court for Alternative Dispute Resolution. He Chaired the Dispute Resolution Section of the New Jersey State Bar Association in 2006-2008. For seven years he Chaired the Morris County (NJ) Bar Association’s ADR Committee and served as Administrator of its volunteer mediator program, recruiting, directing, assigning, scheduling, monitoring, and evaluating a panel of sixty mediators successfully resolving more than five hundred court cases per year. In 2004 he was the MCBA Pro Bono/Community Service Award honoree.

Feigenbaum serves on the Board of the New Jersey Association of Professional Mediators, and has met its stringent requirements to be designated an Accredited Professional Mediator. He is a New Jersey Court-Approved Mediator, a National Association of Securities Dealers trained Arbitration Chairperson, and a member of the Dispute Resolution Section of the American Bar Association.

Avocations

Feigenbaum is an avid gardener. He has completed academic requirements for a certificate in horticulture, worked with professional staff at a major municipal arboretum, and regularly conducts garden tours there. He designed and maintains his own one- acre property including a formal English garden, a woodland walk, and other perennial garden rooms. He has owned a retail florist shop, and conceived an innovative flowers-by-wire service for affinity groups.

His other principal diversion is tennis. He plays nearly every morning, and intends to continue doing so until he gets it right.

Education and Licenses

Feigenbaum earned a bachelor of arts in psychology from the University of Maryland, and his law degree from the Georgetown Law Center where he served on the Board of Editors of the Georgetown Law Journal, and as Justice (President) of Phi Alpha Delta Law Fraternity. He is licensed to practice law in the District of Columbia and the States of Washington (Inactive) and New Jersey and New York.