Beth Kushner

Attorney

Beth Kushner

Attorney

Telephone

(414) 287-1373
Fax

(414) 238-6592
Email
Office

Milwaukee
411 East Wisconsin Avenue
Suite 1000
Milwaukee, WI 53202

Beth Kushner is a Shareholder in the Litigation and Risk Management Practice Group. She specializes in complex litigation and has successfully handled a broad range of business and commercial disputes, shareholder disputes, construction matters, antitrust disputes, class actions of all sorts, fraud and RICO cases, employment cases and product liability claims. She has a particular expertise in cases that involve high exposure and difficult facts, and her clients appreciate her creative, pragmatic, and cost-effective approach to litigation. She has a demonstrated ability to devise and implement winning strategies and to do so without losing sight of cost, business disruption, or public relations. In addition, Beth regularly represents clients in mediations and arbitrations, as well as acts as a neutral, and is a member of the Wisconsin Association of Mediators. She enjoys the respect of lawyers and judges in Wisconsin and around the country.

Beth is a member of The American Law Institute, where elected membership of lawyers, judges, and law professors is limited to 3,000. She is also a Senior Fellow of the Litigation Counsel of America, an invitation-only society of trial lawyers comprised of less than 1/2 of 1% of American lawyers.

In 2014, Wisconsin’s two United States senators nominated Beth to President Barack Obama as a federal district court judge. She is a Fellow of both the Wisconsin Law Foundation and the American Bar Foundation.

Beth has maintained an active pro bono practice and is committed to providing legal services to indigent and other underserved clients. In 1997, she received the Gene and Ruth Posner Pro Bono award for assisting Russian and Eastern European immigrants. In 2002, she received the Association of Women Lawyers’ Mentoring Award.

Beth is an Adjunct Professor at Marquette Law School, where she teaches Pretrial Practice.

Beth currently volunteers in hospice with her rough collie, Howard. Between 2006 and 2009, she served on the Board of Directors of Meta House, an organization that assists women with substance abuse issues and their children.

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I'm Beth Kushner and I've been practicing for almost 45 years – all in litigation. And started mediating cases as counsel back in the 1990s and as an off-shoot, people started to ask me to mediate their cases, and I've been doing it ever since.

What’s your mediation style?

Unconventional. Personal. Creative. Every case is different; every dynamic is different. My job is to roll with that, and not to try to impose strictures on the parties or their lawyers, but to do what's best to resolve their case.

What makes you a successful mediator?

I hear what people are saying. I think that goes beyond listening, it goes to really finding out what's at play – whether there are emotional or financial or business constraints that affect their case – and I want to recognize those issues, but I also want the parties and their lawyers to, and I think my ability to do that allows me to resolve cases that maybe are a little difficult to settle.

What types of cases are you skilled at mediating?

Ugly cases. If a case has a strong emotional component, if people truly think they hate each other or their lives are over or the world will come to an end … A lot of times those are the cases people bring to me because I can cut through a lot of that melodrama and bring people to a place that's more realistic and more comfortable. It is a bad feeling to live with that level of stress and if I can take that away, which I seem to be able to do, then I can move them forward.

Parting thought:

There's no formula. So, I hope that people will be open, receptive to my perspective, and candid with their own; if they do that we have a good chance.

University of Virginia, J.D., 1979
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, B.A., 1975

Wisconsin
Virginia
U.S. District Court, Eastern and Western Districts of Wisconsin
U.S. Court of Appeals, 7th Circuit
U.S. Supreme Court

American Bar Association (Dispute Resolution Section; Litigaton; Senior Lawyers Division)
Trial Law Institute, Member
Diversity Law Institute, Member

American Law Institute, Member
Litigation Counsel of America, Senior Fellow
The Best Lawyers in America^®, Bet-the-Company Litigation (2022-2025), Appellate (2021-2025), Commercial Litigation (2007-2025), Personal Injury Litigation-Defendants (2013-2025), Product Liability-Defendants (2015-2025)
Best Lawyers^® Product Liability Litigation-Defendants "Lawyer of the Year", Milwaukee (2021)
“Top 25: Women Wisconsin Super Lawyers^®” (2011-2013, 2017)
Wisconsin Super Lawyers^® (2005-2023)
Benchmark Litigation “Top 250 Women in Litigation”
American Law Foundation, Fellow
Wisconsin Law Foundation, Fellow
"Women in the Law", Wisconsin Law Journal (2007)