After a long and distinguished career practicing law, Robert Adams, Esq. joined NAM’s Hearing Officer panel. He gained his ample experience over many years of representation of clients in the personal injury, appellate, employment, entertainment, insurance, international law, negligence, sports, tourism, and transportation arenas, with a specific focus on construction law. The expertise he acquired served as an ideal background providing him with industry knowledge for his current role as a mediator. Mr. Adams hears cases in all areas of personal injury, specifically labor law and applies his knowledge of civil engineering to cases involving construction site injuries.

Prior to joining NAM, Mr. Adams was a well-known and highly respected Senior Vice President of Risk Management with Tishman Construction Corporation and its international parent company, AECOM, where he was responsible for managing all aspects of litigation nationwide, including matters involving the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site. He oversaw highly complex cases with exposure well into the seven and eight-figure range. Mr. Adams mediated cases nationally, including Florida, Illinois, New Mexico, and Puerto Rico, as well as numerous states in the northeastern United States and internationally. This experience enabled him to develop proficiency in navigating the complex insurance issues concerning priority of coverage (vertical vs. horizontal exhaustion of primary policies), issues which often present a major hurdle to resolving high exposure cases. Mr. Adams’ responsibilities for handling litigation and risk management provided him with a depth of knowledge involving key areas of civil engineering.

Prior to joining Tishman Construction Corp., Robert Adams was a partner at a national law firm, where he managed an international practice and represented clients in fields such as construction, product liability, entertainment, premises liability, appellate practice, and insurance coverage disputes. As a litigator, he developed an affinity towards alternative dispute resolution (ADR) and counseled his broad clientele to consider this mechanism as a means towards finalizing time-consuming and costly litigation. A testament to his national reputation within the field of ADR, Mr. Adams was voted a Top Three Mediator in National Law Journal and Corporate Counsel Best of Surveys. In 2022, he was voted a Top Ten Mediator by the New York Law Journal’s “Best Of” survey, and he has repeatedly been ranked a Top Ten Mediator since the survey’s inception. Further, he was named a National Law Journal Alternative Dispute Resolution Champion, as part of a select group of only 48 nationwide. Mr. Adams was also voted a Top 5 International Mediator in the New York Law Journal Survey in 2012, the only year the category was ranked.

Mr. Adams has participated on several occasions in the FERMA (Federation of European Risk Management Association) conference in Europe. Having lived in France for several years while playing professional basketball following his undergraduate career at Colgate University, he is fluent French and subsequently did a great deal of work in the French market.

Mr. Adams is available to mediate cases throughout New York and Connecticut.