Edwin V. Woodsome is a member of Phillips ADR’s distinguished panel of neutrals. He was most recently the managing partner of Dechert LLP’s Los Angeles office, which he opened in 2011. Prior to that time he was a partner at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, where he was head of Global Litigation.

He has more than 35 years of state and federal trial experience in a variety of subject matter areas, including consumer fraud, False Claims Act and FCPA cases, internal investigations and corporate governance, international dispute resolution, securities class actions, product liability and toxic torts, trade secrets, employment, wage and hour class actions, insurance, antitrust and intellectual property litigation. Mr. Woodsome has significant appellate experience in both state and federal courts throughout the United States as well as business counseling experience for multinational corporations doing business in the United States. Mr. Woodsome has extensive mediation and arbitration experience both as a practitioner and as a neutral. He has participated in public service ADR programs, including the mediation panel for the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

Mr. Woodsome’s clients have included leading firms in the transportation, airline, banking and financial services, publishing, real estate, technology, aerospace, oil and gas, entertainment and consumer products industries. He served for more than twenty years as U.S. national litigation counsel for one of the world’s largest logistics companies, whom he represented in a number of arbitrations, as well as trial and appellate matters throughout the United States. He has also represented that firm in many parts of the world, including Asia, Africa, Europe and the Middle East, in a wide range of complex litigation matters. Mr. Woodsome also served for many years as U.S. Litigation counsel for one of the world’s largest air carriers, based in the Middle East, in numerous litigation and regulatory matters.

Mr. Woodsome has conducted international investigations at the request of the Boards of Directors of both public and privately held companies. These matters have involved a variety of sensitive topics, including sexual harassment, criminal fraud and money laundering.

Mr. Woodsome is a frequent author and lecturer on complex business litigation, international dispute resolution, class action litigation and employment relations issues. For many years he served on the Southwestern Law School Board of Trustees. He has been on the boards of several non-profit organizations, most recently as CEO of Operation Walk, which provides free orthopedic surgical procedures to those in need around the world, most recently Cuba.

Mr. Woodsome graduated summa cum laude from the College of the Holy Cross, where he was Valedictorian. He attended Harvard Law School, where he graduated magna cum laude, was an Editor of the Harvard Law Review and received the Sears Prize for academic performance. Following law school Mr. Woodsome was a law clerk for the Honorable James R. Browning on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He then served as an officer in the United States Navy. Mr. Woodsome is admitted to practice in California, Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.

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