About the Arbitrator
The arbitrator is Brett C. Klein, who was a judge of the Los Angeles Municipal Court from 1990 to 2000, and a judge of the Los Angeles Superior Court from 2000 to November 2009.
After college at Cornell and law school at Penn, Mr. Klein did a two-year federal-court clerkship in Philadelphia, then worked briefly as a medium-size-firm business litigator in Los Angeles, then taught law full-time at University of La Verne from 1976-1985. His teaching field was commercial law, corporations, and bankruptcy. Mr. Klein taught also taught the core courses in civil procedure, torts, and evidence.
From 1986-1990, Mr. Klein was a writs attorney at the state Court of Appeal in Los Angeles. He wrote over a thousand internal memos on writ cases, and drafted over a hundred appellate opinions on writs cases and appeals.
For portions of his career as a municipal court judge, totalling 19 months, Mr. Klein was temporarily assigned on loan to the court of appeal, where he wrote hundreds of appellate opinions. You can find his 20 published opinions on Lexis, using the following search query: writtenby (klein) and court ("division two" or "division four") or name (mardula)
In 2010, after he retired, Mr. Klein was publicly censured by the California Commission on Judicial Performance in connection with rulings he made on a proposed class-action settlement. You can read about it here: http://www.metnews.com/articles/2010/klei020310.htm.
Mr. Klein provides the usual private-judge mediation and arbitration services, such as settlement conferences, discovery disputes, and arbitration trials. He does not handle family-law or probate cases.
Except for arbitration trials, Mr. Klein ordinarily does not provide in-person hearings. Rather, he conducts hearings by conference telephone or videophone or the computer equivalent. He does not use telephone, fax, mail, delivery service, or messenger for communications; instead, he uses e-mail exclusively.
Currently, Mr. Klein charges $200 per hour for his professional services, and $50 per hour for travel time and waiting time. Mr. Klein is aware that other retired judges have higher rates; if you feel that you get what you pay for, then you should hire someone more expensive.
In addition to the usual private-judge services, Mr. Klein provides an all-inclusive flat-fee service that he calls Superior Court 2.0. Essentially, this service competes with the state trial court system by offering efficiencies that cut down on unnecessary attorney time.
Mr. Klein resides in Los Angeles and Oakland. He is 61 years old. His father and maternal grandfather were lawyers. His wife is a retired lawyer. His son is a law student.
The rest of this page describes Superior Court 2.0.
Superior Court 2.0 Fact Sheet
Superior Court 2.0 is not a court; it is not a government entity. It is a private-sector alternative to conduct litigation, designed to complete with the official trial court in efficiency and cost.
Best use of SC2.0:
Suppose you have a case that you are pretty sure will settle without trial. If you file the complaint in public court, both attorneys have to charge their clients for repeated trips to court for status conferences. But if parties are both willing to file in SC2.0, the court is available whenever you need it, but SC2.0 will leave you alone when you don't need the court. In the typical case, both plaintiff and defendant will save a lot of time and money in legal fees.
Advantages of SC2.0:
1. SC2.0 does not waste your time. No status conferences. No OSCs. No case management conferences. No mandatory settlement conferences. No final status conferences.
2. Zero backlog for motion or trial.
3. The case proceeds at the parties' preferred pace, not the court's pace. Fast? Slow? Whatever you wish.
4. Courteous, efficient, intelligent staff.
5. All communications are by e-mail. No messenger fees. No photocopying bills.
6. All hearings (except trials) are by telephone, unless you prefer otherwise.
7. You are never stuck with the particular judge -- you can move into public court at any time.
8. The arbitrator is retired judge Brett C. Klein
Disadvantages of SC2.0:
1. Initial filing fee is $1,000. (This covers everything except a trial that lasts more than one day.) The public superior court charges only $395 per party.
2. No jury trials. For those, you have to move the case out of SC2.0 and into public court.
3. Judgments are not enforceable by writ or abstract; for that, you need to file a case in public court and get a judgment confirming arbitration award. (All pretrial and trial decisions of SC2.0 have the legal status of arbitration awards.)
4. The arbitrator is retired judge Brett C. Klein.
