Law in the Family

The episode contains pockets of genuine procedural detail (rule numbers, disclosure protocols, the opt-out on written findings) useful to PA family law practitioners, but roughly half the runtime is conversational back-patting, throat-clearing anecdotes, and restatements of obvious arbitration basics. For any B2B operator outside this narrow niche, the per-minute insight yield is extremely low.

“you cannot agree, like in an agreement now, that if there's a dispute in the future, we're going to submit it to Arbitration, you would have to reconfirm the arbitration at the time the dispute arrives”

“I always throw out the option of, do you want me to just draft an arbitration award without the findings and conclusions? And if they agree to do that, you have 14 days to ask me for my findings and conclusions”

The overarching thesis - arbitration is faster and cheaper than litigation - is a well-worn argument, and most of the episode recycles points practitioners already know. The 'Mike Fingerman method' label is locally flavored but not a conceptually original framework, and nothing challenges conventional thinking in the field.

“I call the Mike Fingerman method. It's kind of particular to Pennsylvania because Mike Fingerman was the guy who really started doing arbitrations in Pennsylvania first”

“My collection rate for alternative dispute is exponentially higher than litigation and there's less waste”

Both guests are genuine, experienced practitioners - Shelly Grossman with 14+ years as a Family Court Master and an active arbitration practice, Candice Komar a senior partner and AAML fellow - not career podcast guests. However, their expertise is hyper-niche to Pennsylvania family law and they offer little that transfers to any broader B2B audience.

“when I was a hearing officer, I never wanted to deal with the personal property or any of those lingering issues, or the house is going to be sold and there's problems”

“last month I just came off of the Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers Arbitration Training Institute program”

There are concrete specifics - named rule numbers (1960 - 1965, 1910.4), a 60-to-90-page award, a 3-to-4-hour Zoom hearing resolved in three weeks, a five-kids/five-years unreimbursed-expense case - but no outcome data, cost comparisons, or settlement-rate statistics, and most evidence is anecdotal rather than systematic.

“The hearing, the arbitration hearing on Zoom was about three to four hours, but then they had the decision in about three weeks. Two, three weeks, and it was five years worth of this stuff”

“that was, I don't know, 60 to 90 pages of an arbitration award and expensive”

The host asks some functional clarifying follow-ups (on directives, enforcement, cost of the written award) and occasionally surfaces useful procedural questions, but she is openly a client of one guest, frames the discussion as promotional throughout, and never challenges a claim or introduces genuine tension.

“Can you explain for listeners what the directive is? And have you ever had issues having your directives enforced through the court?”

“When you're doing your award, there may be some where the litigants, through their counsel, want to be a little bit more cost effective and they don't need a full blown explanation on every single asset”