Interview with Sean Coffey, mediator and arbitrator in Phillips ADR’s distinguished panel of neutrals, by Dr. Lynn Phillips, Client Experience (CX) Engineering expert, Berkeley Research Group.
Sean Coffey brings a remarkable combination of perspectives and expertise to Phillips ADR’s clients. Sean joined the firm’s distinguished panel of neutrals after having served as Senate-confirmed 24th General Counsel of the Navy, where he managed a prodigious docket of defensive and affirmative litigation. Prior to that, he was a nationally renowned plaintiff and defense lawyer in diverse disputes spanning securities, shareholder derivative, breach of fiduciary duty, accounting, class actions, real estate, intellectual property, mass torts, bankruptcy, insurance, employment, regulatory, among other complex commercial litigation matters. He is also familiar with third-party litigation funding, having been an entrepreneur who co-founded a startup in that space. Since joining Phillips ADR, Sean has drawn on this considerable spectrum of experience to mediate disputes involving securities, breach of contract, data breaches, antitrust, opioids, class actions, and derivative claims, among other areas.
Sean was sent advance preparation questions prior to the interview indicating topics to be discussed. The interview was recorded but it has been edited and some topics covered were reordered for clarity.
(LP): Sean, thanks for your time today and for your service to the country as General Counsel of the Navy and your 26 years as an active and reserve naval officer before that. Before diving into our talk about ADR, I want to touch on your investigation that led the Secretary of the Navy to exonerate 258 young black sailors who were wrongfully convicted in 1944 after a munitions explosion incident at Port Chicago, California. I read your acceptance speech on being designated ‘2025 Commemorative Hero’ by the Friends of Port Chicago National Memorial. It’s hard to read that with a dry eye as you describe the tireless efforts by yourself and many others who came before you who struggled to win exoneration. (https://phillipsadr.com/coffey-friends-of-port-chicago-2025-commemorative-hero/)
(SC): As I said in my remarks at the ceremony, the real heroes of Port Chicago were the sailors who suffered the injustice yet didn’t live long enough to see the wrong done to them righted; their families who pressed to have their loved ones cleared and never let up; and the citizens who pressed for justice when few were listening. As a plebe at the Naval Academy, I learned John Paul Jones’ rally cry, ‘I’ve not yet begun to fight.’ The real heroes of Port Chicago voiced that battle cry for 8 decades until they finally got the Navy to listen and do the right thing. I am quite proud to have played a role in delivering long-delayed justice to those sailors.
(LP): Sean, you’ve had a storybook stellar career. You have been a federal prosecutor, a top plaintiff and defense lawyer in several large nationally known law firms, a former General Counsel of an agency with a quarter-trillion dollar annual budget, and you even once founded a commercial litigation finance company. Why did you decide to transition to becoming a mediator vs. other career options and why did you join Phillips ADR vs. other ADR firms?
(SC): When I was thinking what to do after the 2024 election, my default option was to go back to a big law firm. We were just speaking about heroes, well Layn Phillips has long been one of mine. I’ve known Layn since he mediated the settlement in the Baptist Foundation of Arizona v. Arthur Andersen over 20 years ago and he mediated a lot of my cases since then. So after the election I called Layn for advice and he said he thought I could be good at mediation. His enthusiasm for my prospects as his partner meant a great deal to me and the decision to join Phillips ADR was a very easy call.
Of course, I had participated in mediations, arbitrations and settlement discussions my entire career and had witnessed Layn’s process up close many times. But when I joined Phillips ADR, I went through its orientational process by ‘shadowing’ Layn on multiple mediations. I learned a ton and it was a richly rewarding experience. It is different when you’re going with him to each room, talking strategy in between.
I’m now off and running doing mediations, devoting my full-time and energy to it and building my own record of cases and settlements. I’ve got my Phillips ADR advance preparation binders lined up in my home office for each case and have a process to quickly come up to speed on each case, since as you know, the level of preparation work Phillips ADR does prior to a mediation is extensive. As a client of the firm, I never saw anything that compared to it with other ADR shops and it’s one reason I wanted to sign on. It’s also one of the reasons Phillips ADR settles these complex, high-stakes cases unexpectedly fast with a remarkable degree of regularity.
(LP): I’d like to shift gears and focus on your Client Value Proposition or CVP as a neutral and how it fits into the bigger Phillips ADR picture. I know that, given your background, Layn sees you as having an unusual portfolio of capabilities, akin to a ‘four-tool’ player in baseball that excels in four of the defined ‘tools’ of the game, namely hitting for average, hitting for power, speed and fielding. How does being a ‘four-tool’ player translate to the game of ADR and why does that combination of capabilities lead to a great Client Experience or CX?
(SC): I need to communicate to stakeholders why the many hats I’ve worn is a plus as they consider whether to choose me as their mediator. I’ve been both a plaintiff’s lawyer and a defense counsel and, to play off the baseball analogy, I think I’ve ‘hit for power and average’ in those roles. But I’ve also been a General Counsel who managed both offensive and defensive litigation, a Casey Stengel if you will. Stakeholders in all those roles can say, ‘Sean has walked in my shoes,’ and feel comfortable choosing me as a neutral.
But Layn noted something else that he thought made my profile as a mediator distinctive, namely I was also involved in litigation finance. Commercial litigation finance is something I did for about 3 years and my familiarity with that space can be of value to a defendant up against a party financed by a third-party funding firm.
(LP): For the uninitiated like me, please explain what commercial litigation finance is in legal services.
(SC): Commercial litigation finance, or “CLF”, is both relatively new and relatively old. It’s relatively old because CLF is akin to the contingency fee model for compensating lawyers that has been around for over a century. In that model, the plaintiffs’ lawyer is both a lawyer (doing the legal work) and a banker (making an investment into the claim by deferring any compensation unless and until there is a recovery). That was the “two hat” model I operated under when I was a contingency fee plaintiff’s lawyer for over a decade at Bernstein Litowitz. What’s relatively new is the splitting of those two roles, where the CLF funder takes on the role of banker underwriting the prosecution of a claim.
Take for example a scenario where a small company has a claim against a large company. It could hire an hourly firm, but that could get expensive and the law firm takes very little risk as it is paid for its work along the way, win or lose. Or the company could avoid the costly payments to a traditional firm by hiring a contingency fee lawyer, who takes the risk of nonpayment if there is no recovery. But a client may not like plaintiff’s lawyers and prefer to use a Kramer Levin or a Latham & Watkins. CLF provides that small company with a third option.
A litigation funder would come in and propose, “I will invest equity in your case on a non-recourse basis and give you the money to pay Latham by the hour. You can hire Latham and they will handle your case and get paid by the hour and I’m going to provide you the money to pay them. In return, if and when you win, I get a percentage of the upside.”
The lawyering is now being done by your classic firm and the banking is being done by a non-lawyer. Having founded a company in this space, I believe in it and am familiar with the economics and the ethical debates surrounding it. That’s my 1-minute overview of commercial litigation finance!
(LP): A follow-up question regarding your CVP as a mediator is how do you define your target market of opportunities? Not surprisingly, given your 40-year career journey, your Phillips ADR bio lists some 25 Areas of Expertise. Litigation finance is but 1 of those. Are there areas you’d especially like to focus on and who are the target client communities and stakeholders within them you must win over?
(SC):Clients want to have mediators who are knowledgeable about their industry sector and the corporate dynamics and pitfalls surrounding disputes that go on within their sector. They prefer mediators who understand the special language and vernacular that accompanies every industry. Some sectors such as Litigation Finance fall into my domain of expertise now, while others fall into sectors I’m targeting for the future.
The most obvious area where I have extensive experience is securities and corporate governance litigation, no question about that. But I’ve litigated in virtually every industry sector over the past three decade-plus. One industry sector that has more recently come within my domain expertise is Aerospace & Defense.
While I was Navy GC, I met with the GCs and senior executives of many defense contractors and other sector players. Some of those encounters were frankly a bit stiff, given my advocacy on behalf of the Navy, Marine Corps, and taxpayer. But it’s much like those prosecutors who leave the U.S. Attorney’s office and then get hired by companies they fought because the firms have respect for how they handled themselves. That same logic applies here. Also, I retain my top secret security clearance credentials and there aren’t many other mediators who can say that.
So, if it’s a matter that is being brought by the Department of the Air Force, say, against a Raytheon or a Lockheed Martin, I can imagine a scenario where the parties say that they need to mediate a matter and need someone with top secret clearance. So, that’s one industry sector.
(LP): Sean, as you well know, a good value proposition seeks to capitalize on emerging opportunities. How will your practice areas and target set of opportunities evolve over the next 5 years? Do you see any shifts in the subjects of disputes in these areas or in how they will be contested by the parties? Are there any trends you’d describe as emergent, controversial or groundbreaking which deal with commercial or civil issues that may turn some sectors into hot spaces of growth in litigation and ADR?
(SC): There will always be a healthy amount of securities litigation, and I suspect it might even become even more common given the flux in the economy and regulatory environment and the emergence of AI. Litigation finance is clearly a hot space of both growth and controversy. I’ve been on several panels debating its pros and cons. One controversy is disclosure. The defense bar wants plaintiffs to disclose that they are being funded so that they can know if their adversary has enough funds to take them to trial. In some jurisdictions, it is now required under the local rules to disclose that there is such funding in place and some courts have even directed plaintiffs to disclose a copy of their funding agreement.
The key point for a firm like Phillips ADR focused on complex, high-stakes cases is to recognize that ever more litigation is being brought by clients drawing on litigation funding. There are publicly-held firms in litigation finance like Burford with these type cases in their portfolio of funded disputes that will be meditated, and they’ll prefer mediators who know their space as there are complicated dynamics in trying to settle disputes involving a litigation funding firm.
I think that resolution of disputes via mediation is a better outcome for these litigation finance companies than trials. After all, they could get a ‘bagel’ if a dispute goes to trial and it doesn’t go well. They’d prefer a steady stream of settlements as part of their portfolio. Again, Burford and others like Omni Bridgeway and LexShares are all publicly traded companies. Their management has quarterly conference calls and they are under scrutiny from investors. Steady monetization of their investments is a good thing for them.
My background aligns with that need faced by these enterprises in that I would be the unusual mediator intimately familiar with how litigation funding works. Another industry that is rapidly evolving as a hot space for litigation and ADR is the Aerospace & Defense (A&D) sector I mentioned earlier. Lawsuits in this sector that skew to complex, high-stakes cases, and thus to opportunities for Phillips ADR, are poised to increase as reliance on commercial technologies becomes ever more prominent.
This is driven by a need to keep pace with China and other nations in technologies that will decide future conflicts. The U.S. military is increasingly drawing upon commercial technologies like advanced communications, AI-based software, cyber, space-based platforms like commercial satellite imagery and higher volume unmanned systems such as drones. The Navy is relying on commercially available ‘intelligent ship’ technologies to achieve substantial cost savings and increased value in shipbuilding.
The list goes on. These are being developed by companies outside the traditional defense industrial base in Silicon Valley and in other innovation hubs as the U.S. integrates lessons learned from recent conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. This trend is likely to fuel a future wave of new litigation. As just one example, industry sources have noted that the adoption of commercial technologies, coupled with the sensitive nature of A&D data, raises significant cybersecurity and data privacy concerns.*
Vulnerabilities in commercial systems could result in data breaches—one of my Areas of Expertise—exposing companies to litigation and regulatory penalties. Regulatory enforcement, such as actions under the False Claims Act for failures in cybersecurity are on the rise with recent cases such as the settlement vs. Raytheon. Introducing commercial technologies can lead to a new wave of litigation in IP, product liability, contract disputes and compliance, etc., all of which are in my Areas of Expertise.
(LP): Sean, in your nearly 40-year career as a plaintiff and defense lawyer and a GC, you must have experienced firsthand time-consuming and/or frustrating scenarios in choosing and working with mediators and arbitrators to settle disputes. Which ones did you see most often and do any represent future opportunities for you?
(SC): There are a number of scenarios that may present opportunities for me as I get settled at Phillips ADR. An obvious one is where timing is an issue. A scenario for me and other Phillips ADR neutrals is where Layn’s schedule is simply unavailable, as it occasionally was for me as a litigator. To be immodest, one of my goals is that, 5 years from now, if Layn isn’t available, clients ask, what about Sean? That is a pretty lofty goal, but if I fall a little short then it is still a good place for me to land.
Here’s a less obvious one. A client of mine while I was Chair of Complex Litigation at Kramer Levin jokingly told Chambers that having me as his defense lawyer was akin to him having a ‘mob informant’ on the inside, because it seemed like I knew what the plaintiffs’ lawyer was thinking and I could help our side to outmaneuver them. He was underscoring the fact that given my background, I have unique insights into the mindset of how plaintiff’s lawyers think, and to some that was a mystery that my insight helped them to unravel.
One of the experiences ADR clients should expect to get, but often don’t, in their use of a mediator is an accurate prediction of what the opposing side is thinking during settlement negotiations and how they are likely to respond to settlement offers. Having a mediator who has been on both a plaintiff and defense lawyer and who has also served as a GC—one of the senior C-suite executives that must ultimately approve any settlement—can facilitate these forecasts and streamline the path to resolution.
Here is one simple example illustrating that precept. The second quarter of a calendar year is often a good time to try and settle with a plaintiff’s firm. Why? Given how cash flow works in a class action plaintiffs’ firm, namely, the delay between inking a settlement and getting the attorneys’ fee in the door, the managers of the firm generally have a good idea by the second quarter how their year is shaping up financially. If a plaintiff lawyer settles a class action case in the second quarter, then they have enough time to get preliminary approval, get a class notice out, hold a hearing, then get the settlement approved in time to get paid in the calendar year.
I know that because I was a Managing Partner of a plaintiff’s law firm. Many lawyers on the defense side who haven’t had that experience may not be aware of that, and it is awareness of these and other countless contextual nuances that can make a difference in bringing about resolution of disputes in accelerated time frames.
(LP): Let’s start to wrap up by doing a quick recap summarizing the Client Experiences which make up the value proposition stakeholders within your targeted practice areas can expect you to deliver and why. I’ll save us time here and recap the obvious, then you can take it from there, if that’s okay?
By appointing you mediator, clients representing all sides of a complex, high-stakes dispute—federal prosecutors, law firm trial and settlement counsel and heads of litigation, corporate defendants and GCs, presiding judges—will experience expedited settlements that satisfy their stakeholders due to:
- Increased confidence you’ll understand and be able to credibly represent the perspective of all parties in a dispute because you’ve been in each of their roles and can do so with no plaintiff or defense bias.
- Increased ability to generate, evaluate and select the best among creative pathways to resolution that will expedite settlement based on your accurate prediction of all party’s needs and likely stratagems.
- They’ll also get a go-to-mediator they can work with for a long time to come because of your expansive areas of expertise with deep specialization in hot spaces like litigation finance and national security.
(SC): I agree and the thing I’d add is that Layn recently remarked that, because I was regarded as a tenacious advocate while litigating, there may be hesitation on viewing Sean Coffey as a “neutral”. I would respond by saying I would bring that same mission-oriented tenacity as ever, but to a new goal–achieving a settlement acceptable to both sides.
(LP): Sean, a final question if I may. All value propositions have tradeoffs. Southwest Airlines used to ask passengers to trade off assigned seats to save travel time and cost. Volvo owners tradeoff some stylishness for safety. That same precept applies to ADR firms as well as to members of their neutral panels. Best practice requires acknowledging tradeoffs in a value proposition, correcting any that are misperceived and ensuring the benefits offset the tradeoffs. Any tradeoffs in your value proposition?
(SC): That’s a great question, and the example I just gave raises one of the perceived tradeoffs in my value proposition as a mediator I need to address. Layn noted that in the mediations that we’ve done together to date, everyone still thinks of me as a plaintiff’s lawyer. I get it. After all, I spent 11 years on the plaintiff’s side of the aisle and was known for taking the WorldCom case to trial where I got outside directors to pay personally, an historical first, and recovered over $6 billion from investors.
At the time, I was dubbed by the media as ‘Wall Street’s New Nemesis’, which as you can imagine, didn’t endear me to corporate defendants or their insurance underwriters. But that was 20 years ago. I also spent more years on the defense side, including 4 years at Paul Weiss and nearly 4 years at Latham & Watkins defending some of the firm’s biggest clients, and over 8 years at Kramer Levin as their Chair of Complex Litigation helping corporate defendants benefit from my insights into plaintiffs’ approach to litigation.
I may have been viewed as an irritant by Wall Street when I was at Bernstein Litowitz, but I note that I later proudly represented Goldman Sachs trader Fabrice (‘Fabulous Fab’) Toure—and Goldman’s conduct—in the 2013 trial that was one of the few financial crisis cases that the SEC ever took to trial. So, the idea that I’m a plaintiff’s lawyer who may bring a plaintiffs-only perspective to the disputes that I mediate is a misperception.
More on Sean Coffey: https://phillipsadr.com/our-team/sean-coffey/
More on Lynn Phillips: https://www.thinkbrg.com/people/lynn-phillips/
*See for example: Baruch, D., Dziengowski, D., Gilligan, M., Hastings, A, Lorenzo, S., Weaver, C. (March 2025). Regulatory Shifts in Aerospace and Defense: What Businesses Need to Know as 2025. Takes Flight. Morgan Lewis.com https://tinyurl.com/morganlewis-regulatory-shifts
Ali, B.O. (July 2025). Revamping Shipbuilding Capabilities in the United States: A Catalyst to Make America Great Again. Journal of Transportation Technologies – Scientific Research.com https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation?paperid=144280
