ADR for Transactional and New Attorneys

Karen J. Orlin, licensed to practice law in New York and Florida and residing near New York City, concentrates her law practice on business and not for profit entity governance and transactions law through her private law firm based in South Florida.

She also serves as an expert witness in ethics and fiduciary duty of attorneys and entity management, as a public arbitrator for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, and as an arbitrator for commercial and consumer disputes on the American Arbitration Association’s Roster of Arbitrators. She has practiced law through large, medium, and small sized law firms, in her solo law practice, and as in house counsel to financial institutions, and taught Corporation Law and Commercial Lending in law schools in South Florida and survey paralegal studies courses in South Florida and New York City.

A published author and seminar and webinar presenter regarding, among other topics, not-for-profit corporation law, legal opinions, and limited liability companies law, she is a member of dispute resolution and other committees of the Business Law Section, Section of Dispute Resolution, and Senior Lawyers Division of the American Bar Association, the Professional Ethics Committee and Task Forces for the Independence of Lawyers and Judges and on the Rule of Law of the New York City Bar Association, the Not-For-Profit Corporations Law Committee of the New York State Bar Association, and legislative drafting and opinions report committees of the Business Law Section of The Florida Bar. She was a member of the Professional Responsibility and Securities Law Committees of the New York City Bar Association. She also was a member of the Professional Ethics Committee, Chair of the Corporations, Securities, and Financial Services Committee, and member of the Executive Council of the Business Law Section of The Florida Bar.

A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard Law School and Peer Review Rated AV Preeminent? by Martindale-Hubbell?, Ms. Orlin’s biography is included in numerous, including current, editions of The Marquis Who’s Who, and she received the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award.

She was named among Florida Legal Elite™ by Florida Trend magazine (July 2010) and among South Florida’s Top Rated Lawyers of 2015-2018 by Legal Leaders (ALM 2015-2018).

Ms. Orlin completed five full marathons, including two New York City marathons, and ten half marathons. She has applied the training and skills developed for those events to care for and home school her young grandchildren, especially during the pandemic.

Sheldon M. Finkelstein is an "AV" rated trial lawyer and an arbitrator. He graduated from Columbia Law School in 1977 where he was awarded the Jerome Michael Prize. Following service as a prosecutor in Philadelphia, he was a Director in Litigation at a large firm and, after 17 years, he became a Director in Litigation in a litigation boutique for another 17 years until 2016. Mr. Finkelstein has extensive experience in a wide range of complex litigation and has served as an arbitrator, primarily in securities matters, for about 38 years.

He is admitted in New Jersey and Pennsylvania as well as various federal courts around the country. He has served in many leadership positions within the American Bar Association’s Litigation Section for the last 25 years and has had many articles published on a wide range of topics. Mr. Finkelstein presently resides near the beach in Delaware. He appears in court only in very special situations and remains active as an arbitrator.

Alan Di Sciullo, Esq. is the retired Director of Global Real Estate for Shearman & Sterling LLP. In that capacity, he directed the firm’s worldwide real estate portfolio. He has been a Senior Vice President with a major global banking organization working on its corporate real estate merger and acquisitions activities and was of counsel with a New Jersey law firm. Mr. Di Sciullo served the largest portion of his career with Morgan Stanley as First Vice President and Senior Counsel responsible for real estate transactions and related litigation, such as the largest leases at the original World Trade Center totaling over 1.2 million sf, claims and relocations following the 1993 and 9/11 attacks on the Towers, development of the 600,000 sf Discover Card Headquarters in Riverwoods, Il., and over 200,000 sf for Dean Witter Trust’s headquarters in Harborside Plaza, Jersey City, NJ.

Mr. Di Sciullo has been active in civic and professional activities. He was a member of President Reagan’s Private Sector Survey on Cost Control (the Grace Committee) and was elected a fellow of the American College of Real Estates Lawyers (ACREL) in 2003. He has served as an Executive, Council and Planning member of the American Bar Association’s Real Property Trust & Estate (RPTE) and has been a long-serving chair of the Office Leasing Committee and various other lease-related committees. He also served as President of the New York chapter of the International Association of Corporate Real Estate Executives (NACORE), director on that organization’s international board of directors, and president-elect of its educational affiliate, the Institute of Corporate Real Estate, and an advisory member on the New York chapter of its successor organization, CoreNet Global. He received numerous leadership and planning awards as the chair of the West Windsor Planning Board between 1993 and 1997. He was a director on the New Jersey Planning Officials board from 1996 to 2014, and he is currently an advisory directory for the Georgetown University Wall Street Alliance.

Mr. Di Sciullo is a co-author of a 2500-page treatise Negotiating and Drafting Office Leases (Law Journal Seminars-Press 1995), now in its 25th year of publication. He is an adjunct Professor at NYU Schack, where he was honored in 2017 for 25 years of service to the University and has received Outstanding Teaching and Services awards. He has also received several Outstanding Faculty awards from CoreNet Global’s MCR program.

Mr. Di Sciullo graduated cum laude in Government and Economics from Georgetown University. He holds J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center and an M.B.A. in finance from New York University. He is listed as a Super Lawyer (2008) and in Who’s Who in America and the World and in companion publications for American Lawyers, Finance and Emerging Leaders. He has been a frequent author and speaker on commercial real estate issues.

John Busey Wood is a member of the commercial real estate group in the New York City office of the national law firm Akerman LLP and advises public and private companies on national real estate transactions, development of mixed use and retail projects, retail centers and portfolio property master and ground leasing.

For over 40 years Mr. Wood has represented owners and tenants in the design and negotiation of commercial leases covering in excess of 100 million square feet of retail, industrial, office and mixed-use projects. These experiences, coupled with a unique blend of professional disciplines, resulted in his being featured on the Wall Street Journal Report and in articles on the impact of commercial leases on commerce and being referred to by The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times as “the father of the modern killer lease.”

Mr. Wood frequently lectures at Columbia University-ISDE Graduate Law and Economics Program and atthe New York University Graduate School and Schack Real Estate Institute. He also lectures at PLI, wherehe is the New York and national Chairman of the Milton Friedman Leasing Lectures, and at the executiveand annual meetings of the ABA and AICPA. Mr. Wood has frequently served as a “party selected” andFederal arbitrator and is an American Arbitration Association -National Neutral -Commercial Panelistand formerly on the board of legal advisers to the former National Title Guaranty Company.

Mr. Wood is the co-author of the national treatise Negotiating and Drafting Office Leases, published by Law Journal Seminars-Press and supplemented 2 times per year ?1994-2020. He is the author of the text book, Navigating The Dangerous Shoals of a Commercial Lease, published by New York University Graduate School, ?1992-2012 and hosts the commercial leasing educational websiteswww.officeleasingusa.com and www.leasingnyc.com which are utilized to supplement his lectures. Mr. Wood is listed in Who's Who Registry of Global Business Leaders, NY Super Lawyers and ALM Distinguished Lawyers. Mr. Wood is AV Preeminent? peer rated by Martindale-Hubbell and was peer-nominated and elected an American Bar Foundation Fellow.

Mr. Wood is a licensed Class “A” commercial real estate broker, a Certified Public Accountant and holds B.B.A. (Accounting and Economics), M.B.A. (Accounting and Finance) and J.D. degrees.