President's Perspective
Depending on the member and the conversation, you can elicit a wide range of answers to the question of top benefits of SER membership. What you may not know, however, is that the member login portion of our website includes a Benefits tab with specific benefits for SER members. I would like to take the opportunity to throw a spotlight on three particular benefits of membership provided by Securities Arbitration Commentator, all of which I have received positive feedback on.
Update: ARBchek is a weekly update, summarizing all of the FINRA awards released the prior week. It is sortable and includes the basic information about the parties, attorneys, claim and award. There is also a link to a pdf of the official award. By reading the awards summary each week, I am better able to identify and track award trends. As an SER member, you should be automatically signed up for this benefit. If you are not already receiving the emails, log in and navigate to the benefits page, then click on “View This Week’s Awards” and to find the button for signing up for a free subscription.
Entry in SAC’s awards database is a service to SER members, in which you may provide SAC with the cases in which you provided expert services. SAC will then associate your name with the award, and attorneys searching through SAC’s database will thereafter find your name on those cases even if the official FINRA award did not specifically name you in it. This only applies to cases that have gone to award. I have used this benefit for all of the cases I have worked on and went to award over the past 5+ years, which has led to new engagements by attorneys using SAC’s search services.
Discount on SAC’s Arbitrator Ranking Service allows us to offer our attorney-clients a discount through SAC that they could not avail themselves of without your referral. This discount gives them 25% off of the service if they are not already subscribers, and 10% off if they already are. I value SER member Mason Dinehardt’s description of how this service helps him and his clients:
“The ARBchek Report prepared by SAC provides the information that securities lawyers need in a compact form in order to make arbitrator ranking decisions. The report shows information in a standardized format about each of an arbitrator's awards
SAC's philosophy is to let the lawyer makes his or her own decision with respect to rankings. Its Arbitrator Comparison Report looks for conflicts such as whether two nominated arbitrators have appeared in a previous case together. The comparison report helps to take the Award data and cross-reference it to find useful items to aid in the evaluation. Finally, it limits the analysis by way of putting the information in front of counsel rather than telling them how the arbitrators should be ranked.
Attorneys that have utilized the analysis have found it very useful in providing the essential information needed to let counsel rank the arbitrators more knowledgeably.
In virtually every case where I have arranged for counsel to receive the report from SAC at a discount, attorneys have told me that the report has saved them hours of time in the arbitrator selection process. In short, it was invaluable.”
If you have not done so already, I encourage you to visit the Benefits section of our website and review the benefits that SAC offers. While you are logged into the SER website, please also take the time to check out our newly remodeled Library. It contains many links and documents that you may find helpful, and is open for submissions. More on that next month …
Respectfully, Jeffery Schaff, President
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