{"id":17370,"date":"2022-01-25T15:32:45","date_gmt":"2022-01-25T15:32:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/160-news\/?p=17370"},"modified":"2026-02-27T22:22:30","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T22:22:30","slug":"finding-common-ground","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/2022\/01\/finding-common-ground\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding Common Ground"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Joe Kutchera ’92 \/ Photo by Serena Bolton<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On September 11, 2001, Tyler Robinson \u201993 was working for a law firm near Grand Central Terminal in midtown Manhattan. When a colleague told him in the elevator that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center\u2019s north tower, they both assumed it was an accident. But when a second plane hit the south tower, as they watched from the top floor of his building with a clear view of lower Manhattan, Robinson knew it was an act of terrorism. When he returned to the top floor later that morning, he was shocked to see that both towers had disappeared entirely from New York City\u2019s skyline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like many New Yorkers, Robinson felt a mixture of horror and grief in the weeks after the attacks. It was balanced by a new sense of community in the enormous, diverse, and sometimes cynical city. \u201cThere was this unspoken sense of connection that was truly powerful because it cut across everything that otherwise made us all so different,\u201d he remembers. In a roundabout way, 9\/11 led Robinson to a new career in international dispute resolution\u2014a field where he finds ways to bridge cultural and legal differences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the weeks after the terrorist attack, Robinson began working\u2014with a team from his law firm, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP\u2014on a case representing Swiss Reinsurance Company (Swiss Re). The firm\u2019s client had written the largest insurance policy (among many) on the World Trade Center for developer Larry Silverstein. Just six weeks prior to the attack, Silverstein had signed a $3.2 billion 99-year lease on the Twin Towers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The stakes were high: Swiss Re argued that the terrorist attack constituted a single event, worth a maximum of $3.5 billion, while Silverstein believed that each plane crash represented a unique insurance loss, entitling him to recover twice the policy limit, or $7 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The case lasted nearly five years including appeals, but the firm\u2019s client ultimately prevailed. In the process, Robinson traveled frequently to London, where much of the insurance had been purchased, and used his skills as a US trial lawyer, doing all of the pretrial preparation required before presenting the case to a jury: writing arguments to the court, preparing and defending witnesses for giving testimony, cross-examining adverse witnesses, and piecing together evidence to construct a timeline of the relevant facts. But because of the international nature of that case, his career evolved to cross borders, ultimately all over the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cInternational dispute resolution requires all the same skill sets as being a trial lawyer in the US,\u201d Robinson says. \u201cThe difference is dealing with clients, courts, and other lawyers who may come from other legal and cultural systems that are different from your own. The basic skills of being an effective, persuasive advocate for your client\u2019s case remain the same, but they need to take account of those legal, cultural differences\u2014otherwise you may not be effective or persuasive to your audience.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After its victory, Simpson Thacher asked Robinson to bolster its international litigation practice in the London market so that the firm could better serve clients with international disputes. Today, Robinson and his Italian wife, whom he met during one of his trips abroad for the Swiss Re case, live in London with their two bilingual daughters. He spends much of his time supervising and mentoring younger lawyers working on international disputes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Robinson\u2019s work brings him before courts, arbitrators, and corporate boardrooms in France, Singapore, Brazil, Indonesia, the UK, and back to the US, to name a few. As an international advocate, he says, \u201cyou look for the common threads that can help resolve conflict. Commercial legal problems, including amongst large multinational corporations, ultimately boil down to human individuals\u2014their faults, foibles, and mistakes. And those tend to look familiar across cultures and continents.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Robinson emphasizes the importance of being able to break down highly technical, complex subjects into straightforward narratives that can be understood by a neutral lay judge or arbitrator who most likely knows very little about each case\u2019s products or industry. \u201cThat requires finding simplicity and key message points in an otherwise enormous morass of conflicting and difficult information,\u201d Robinson says. And then, after all of the preparation, he and his team need to persuade the judge or arbitrator that their client\u2019s version of the story is the better one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In order to resolve conflict, Robinson has learned how fundamental it is to build credibility and trust. \u201cIf you listen to other people, they\u2019ll listen to you,\u201d Robinson says. \u201cIf you are able to articulate to them their position in a way that acknowledges it and shows you understand it, you\u2019re more likely to get them to do the same for you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Robinson says that, broadly speaking, he is using his Macalester psychology degree when negotiating with people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPersonal connection isn\u2019t just about language,\u201d he says. \u201cIt includes one\u2019s attitude, behavior, nonverbal communication, and using the documentary evidence to direct the conversation. But with that said, common sense, reason, and a sense of humor are universal human traits that are accepted everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joe Kutchera \u201992<\/a> is the author of three books and the founder of Latino Link Advisors<\/a>, a Hispanic marketing and content development firm.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The September 11 terror attacks brought US trial lawyer Tyler Robinson \u201993 onto a new path in international dispute resolution.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1077,"featured_media":17458,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","mediatype-articles"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"fields":{"article_type":[8],"flickr_photoset_id":"","youtube_id":"","square_thumbnail":false,"press_photos":false,"story_title":"","story_caption":"","rotations":false,"maps":false,"marker_title":"","marker_text":"","geographic_location":false,"feature_embed":"","custom_link_url":"","news_icon_name":"","image_options":false,"main_feature_story":"","custom_image":false,"custom_feature_title":"","custom_feature_caption":"","custom_markup":"","custom_markup_link":"","custom_markup_title":"","custom_markup_caption":"","byline":"","post_thumbnail_style":"default","press_downloads":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1077"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17370"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30675,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17370\/revisions\/30675"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}