Dr. Molly Klapper’s extraordinarily varied life experiences as literature professor, insurance defense litigator, real estate agent, and administrative law judge, living and traveling overseas, contribute uniquely to her effectiveness and success as a professional mediator.

Insurance and Real Estate

Dr. Klapper was an attorney at one of the largest defense insurance firms in the nation where she handled a broad range of cases including commercial disputes, insurance and reinsurance matters, coverage issues, medical, attorney, and accountant malpractice, employment discrimination, security issues, personal injury and auto cases, as well as aiding in the representation of the NYS Insurance Liquidator in bankruptcy and asset recovery matters. On medical malpractice discovery, her article on “Counsel’s Right to Ex Parte Interviews with Plaintiff’s Non-Party Treating Physicians Prior to Trial but After Completion of Discovery” was published in the New York Law Journal (September 18, 1996).

She also handled corporate and transactional matters for the firm’s clients, including negotiating and drafting contracts and agreements including shareholders’, employment, escrow, stock purchase and sale with covenant not to compete, and confidentiality. She advised foreign insurance companies on how to operate in the United States and helped procure insurance and reinsurance licenses in different states. She was instrumental in helping set up as well as liquidate New York and New Jersey companies for the firm’s clients.

Dr. Klapper also worked on real estate closings and mortgage refinancings. She had been a successful real estate agent for condominiums and cooperative apartments in Manhattan.

Administrative Agencies

Dr. Klapper learned of the workings of administrative agencies, federal, state and local, from serving as an administrative law judge for the Taxi and Limousine Commission (presently on the Appeals Unit) and the New York City Department of Finance. She is an adjunct Professor at Touro Law School where she teaches Administrative Law. Her course emphasizes federal, state and local administrative agencies, agencies in the News, and how rules of statutory construction are an aid in the explication of the agency’s rules.

She was co-chair of a full-day Administrative Law Conference at the City Bar, where key people in the field discussed significant administrative law issues facing the nation. She presented a paper on “Informal Rulemaking in Interstate Compacts,” at the 2005 midyear ABA Administrative Law conference. She has also contributed articles to the ABA’s Administrative & Regulatory News on state and local administrative law.

Teaching

Dr. Klapper has taught writing and both World and English literature at several colleges and universities as well as public elementary and high schools. She regularly organized sessions for the Modern Language Association and was the recipient of an American Philosophical Society award and a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar Fellowship at Princeton University.

International

Dr. Klapper lived in Zurich, Switzerland, for a number of years, and has traveled widely in Europe, the Middle East, China, Japan and India. She speaks and writes German fluently, and has some familiarity with French and Spanish. Her Ph.D. dissertation in English Literature concerned the German Literary Influence on the English Romantic Poets, Byron and Shelley, and focused particularly on Goethe, the German Bard. Her monograph on Shelley included a discussion of Shelley’s unpublished translation of parts of Goethe’s Faust.

She recently lectured at Potsdam University (Germany) on “Mediating with the Federal Government.”

Dispute Resolution

Dr. Klapper is a highly trained and very experienced mediator. She mediates several disputes a week on a wide range of subjects for various entities, including the New Jersey Superior Court, American Arbitration Association, New York State Supreme Court (Commercial Division), FINRA, U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey and the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, and others.

She has served as NASD coach for new mediator classes and as a master mediator in a Mediation Course at Touro Law School. She is a Harvard-trained mediator and has taken mediation courses at the New York City Bar and attends annual advanced mediation seminars given by the New Jersey Superior Court as well as mediation seminars given by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York and the Bankruptcy Court, and the NYSBA. She serves on the NYSBA publications committee and is presently planning a book on “Creative Impasse-Breaking Techniques."

Her thought-provoking and inspirational articles on mediation and arbitration have been published in various prestigious journals and garnered for her the coveted President’s Circle Award in 2003 from the Association of Professional Insurance Women.

Memberships and Avocations

Dr. Klapper serves as a Director and program chair of the New Jersey State Bar Association’s Dispute Resolution Section. She is also a member of the Garibaldi American Inn of Court for ADR, the Middlesex (NJ) Bar Association, the New York State Bar Association and the Bar of the City of New York.

She loves, biking, hiking, skiing, and tennis. She is currently taking ballet lessons and is an avid gym fan of yoga and Pilates. She also dabbles in matchmaking for young people.

Education and Admissions

Dr. Klapper holds the Ph.D. degree in English Literature from New York University and a J.D. degree from Rutgers University Law School (Newark). She earned her BA and MA from the City University of the City of New York.

She is admitted to practice law before the U.S. Supreme Court, the 2nd and 3rd Circuit Courts of Appeals, the U.S. District Court of New Jersey and the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, in New Jersey and New York State courts, and the International Court of Trade.