James H. Gilbert

Meet James H. Gilbert

• What is your experience as a mediator?
• Tell us about your experience on the bench and as a practicing attorney and how that has helped to prepare you to be a neutral.
• What is the most rewarding aspect of your work as a neutral?
• How should one go about hiring a mediator – what traits and experience should one look for?
• Tell us about any scholarly lectures or writings you’ve done.

James H. Gilbert is a former Associate Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court. He was a certified trial lawyer (1997 – 2004) and was named Distinguished Jurist of the Year for 2004 by the Academy of Certified Trial Lawyers of Minnesota. In 2000 he also received 97% of the votes in the Minnesota State Bar Association Preference Poll.

Justice Gilbert has served as mediator, arbitrator, special master, settlement administrator and consultant on case resolution involving hundreds of cases for individuals, Fortune 500 companies, the State of Minnesota, municipalities, insurance companies, and partners and shareholders in Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota and Iowa. He has resolved a large variety of civil cases in state and federal court including employment, real estate, banking, insurance coverage issues, anti-trust, environmental, taxes, government regulation, discrimination, shareholder and partner disputes, municipal zoning issues and many more. Justice Gilbert has also successfully mediated approximately 50 Ponzi claw back cases involving the Petters bankruptcy. Since stepping down from the MN Supreme Court, Justice Gilbert has mediated and arbitrated hundreds of cases in all types of civil cases.

A member of Meshbesher & Spence, Ltd. from 1972 through 1998, Justice Gilbert served as the law firm’s managing partner from 1984-1992, and as its chief executive officer from 1996-1997. Appointed in 1997 by former Governor Arne Carlson as an Associate Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, Justice Gilbert then garnered 69% of the vote in a statewide election to become elected to the position in 2000, where he served until 2004. As an Associate Justice, he reviewed more than 5,000 petitions, participated in more than 800 decisions and authored numerous opinions, concurrences and dissents.

During his long legal career, Justice Gilbert has served both the law profession and the community in a variety of ways.

• 1992-1997: Chair, Ad Hoc Committee on Appointments to the Supreme Court, Appellate Court, Minnesota Tax Court and Workers’ Compensation Court of Appeals. In this position, Justice Gilbert helped to advise former Governor Arne Carlson on more than 90 judicial appointments.
• 1997-2003: Minnesota State Bar Association Certified Civil Trial Specialist.
  From 1998 to 2007: Member of the State Board of Directors for MN D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), MN D.A.R.E. Advisory Council.
• 2004-2008: Appointed by the Minnesota Supreme Court as chair of the Standing Committee on No-Fault Arbitration for Minnesota. The committee is charged with reducing caseload numbers in Minnesota courts and to speed the process of No-Fault Automobile Claim arbitration.
• Appointed Chairman of the Minnesota News Council’s hearing panel, effective January 2007 – January 2011.
• Appointed by the Minnesota Supreme Court to be acting Chief Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, August – September 2008 to hear a contested election case.
• 2008 Minnesota State Bar Association Certified Civil Arbitrator.
• Qualified Neutral under Minnesota Rule 114.
• President and Founder of Gilbert Mediation Center, Ltd.
• Alternative Moot Court Justice, John Marshall School of Law, Chicago Illinois, privacy and information technology, 2000 to 2014.

In 2019, Justice Gilbert spoke on the panel entitled “Ethical and Cross-Cultural Issues in Mediation and Settlement Negotiations” at the CLS Mediation Symposium in Salzburg, Austria.